Illyes Ferfera’s Tawazûn brings North African melody to jazz quartet, November 13 at Alliance Française

Rising French-Algerian saxophonist opens new routes through the traditional musical map

By Brian Lynch

The Illyes Ferfera Quartet.

Alliance Française Vancouver presents the Illyes Ferfera Quartet at 6161 Cambie Street on November 13

THE CURRENTS OF jazz have always flowed back and forth over borders and, most powerfully, over seas and oceans, from Africa to Latin America, North America to Europe and beyond.

Any of these shifts carries the possibility of reimagining the form, as the upcoming Vancouver performance by rising French-Algerian saxophonist Illyes Ferfera will prove, November 13 at Alliance Française Vancouver. In fact, Ferfera’s quartet has this map covered, folding traditional North African melody into the harmonic and improvisational approaches developed in France and the Americas over the decades.

Appropriately, the name of this project—which brings Ferfera together with Simon Chivallon on piano, Arthur Henn on double bass, and Tom Peyron on drums—is Tawazûn, an Arabic term for “balance”, a state that jazz creates and relies on in unique ways, especially when it’s this far-reaching. The result, according to reviewers, reflects both ambition and a generous desire to connect with listeners.

Ferfera’s career is still young, but already he’s finding his own way of showing how jazz moves the past—in this case, a truly global past—in new and unexpected directions.

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