UNIVERSAL LANGUAGE
Music in Corrales series opens with trio that brings together musicians from Iraq, Iran and Palestine
“One Sky,” the title of the Rahim AlHaj Trio’s coming album, is a simple phrase that is more than a statement asking everyone on earth to look up and admire the same sky.
It’s a statement of AlHaj, a twotime Grammy nominee, about appreciating and sharing what we have.
“We don’t have four or five skies, one that’s for Americans, one that’s for Europeans, one that’s for Africans, (one that’s for Asians). … I feel we have one sky and one earth for all humanity. It belongs to all of us,” said AlHaj, an Albuquerque oud player and composer. The oud is an ancient Arabic lute.
“That’s the message I’m trying to send to the world. No matter where you came from, no matter your nationality. … What we need is to find a common ground.”
The trio will play selections from the album at Sunday’s concert at the Historic Old San Ysidro Church in Corrales as part of the 2017-18 Music in Corrales season. The CD is due out in March from Smithsonian Folkways; it was recorded at Jon Gagan’s Santa Fe studio.
The other ensemble members are Sourena Sefati, an Iranian who plays the santour, a type of hammered dulcimer, and Issa Malluf, a Palestinian who plays the cajón,a Latin percussion instrument, and several Arabic percussion instruments. Both are Albuquerque residents.
AlHaj, who was born and raised in Iraq, said that by joining with these musicians he is trying to put a human face on the people of Iran and the rest of the Middle East.
He brought up another point. Iran and Iraq fought each other for eight years in the 1980s and now he, an Iraqi, and Sefati, an Iranian, perform together.
“Imagine the beauty of that,” AlHaj said.
“(At the same time), what I am trying to do is bring these stories of everyone on the planet who suffers from discrimination and put them together in compositions,” he said.
AlHaj was awarded an NEA National Heritage Fellowship in 2015.
These are the other concerts in the Music in Corrales season:
3 p.m. Nov. 19. Jazz vocalist Tierney Sutton and her ensemble.
7:30 p.m. Dec. 9. Harpeth Rising(cq), a women’s folk trio.
7:30 p.m. Jan. 26. The Jasper String Quartet.
3 p.m. Feb. 11. m-pact,a men’s a cappella sextet.
3 p.m. March 4. The Harlem Quartet with Cuban pianist Aldo López-Gavilán.
7:30 p.m. April 14. Irish harpist Máire Ní Chathasaigh and British guitarist Chris Newman.
All of the concerts are at the Historic Old San Ysidro Church in Corrales, except the March concert, which is in the concert hall of Sue V. Cleveland High School in Rio Rancho.