A saxophone spurts a bogglingly asymmetrical, free-falling melody. A nostalgic-sounding Hammond B3 organ churns a sweet, bluesy vamp sound. The drums playfully lock, drive and skirt around the groove. Shades of funk, soul, R&B and gospel are cooked up in a simmering jazz stew.
Welcome to Time, the compelling debut album from temperature-raising Dubai-based group ARS Trio.
The band bring together three of the city’s best jazz musicians, taking their name from their initials: alto saxophonist Artur Grigoryan, drummer Rony Afif and organist Samvel Gasparyan.
Each is a familiar face in his own right – Afif and Gasparyan are members of Abri & Funk Radius, the party-starting outfit best known for their weekly residencies at Jazz@Pizza Express and Blue Bar, while Grigoryan gigs in a piano duo with Gasparyan, among other projects.
Yet ARS stand apart from their other work as a project born of passion, not commerce: the musicians don't regularly play live together as a three-piece and have never performed the music from Time in the UAE. This is something these guys do simply for the love of it.
“I don’t have lots of faith to play this music in Dubai,” says Gasparyan, sadly. “To play jazz is a constant battle – and it’s only getting more challenging.”
The limited appeal, worldwide, of jazz – a primarily instrumental, improvised musical artform, demanding the greatest technical understanding of both musician and listener – is hardly news. But for Gasparyan, jazz embodies a greater sense of opposition – at the time of his birth, the genre was largely “banned” in his home country, Armenia, which was then part of the Soviet Union.
“I discovered jazz in my teenage years, after the collapse [of the Soviet Union],” says the 33-year-old. “I remember I had one Oscar Peterson vinyl that I kept playing again and again to transcribe the solos. It was hard to get – if you had one music book or record, everyone was taking it to make a copy.”
After formally studying classical music, in 2003 the pianist moved to the United States, where he spent nine years working as a musician in Los Angeles and Tennessee, primarily playing country music.
Returning briefly to Armenia, Gasparyan found himself in a Latin band alongside Grigoryan, another conservatoire-trained professional musician who had caught the jazz bug at a very young age after hearing a recording of Dave Brubeck's classic Take Five while a toddler.
“I was a 3, 4 years old,” says Grigoryan, 31. “There was just one jazz tune on this record, but even at that age, I just loved it. I said: ‘When I grow up, I want to play the saxophone.’”
That dream became a reality, but after years of gigging in clubs in Yerevan, the Armenian capital, he was ready for a change.
In 2012, he and Gasparyan moved to the UAE, where they played as a duo at various locations, including the Cigar Bar at Jumeirah Zabeel Saray.
“Artur was kind of bored, he wanted a change – a cruise ship, some way out of the country,” says Gasparyan. “I had the option of Dubai, Shanghai or Singapore – and I chose Dubai.”
It wasn’t long before the pair ran into Afif, a 37-year-old veteran of the UAE jazz scene who fled Lebanon, his homeland, in the midst of the 2006 war. If you have a passing interest in the genre, chances are you’ve seen Afif perform live, either leading his own group alongside his brother and bassist Elie, or at the Dubai Jazz Festival, Abu Dhabi Jazz Festival, Womad Abu Dhabi or du World Music Festival.
Afif's career reached a new peak last year with the release of solo album Zourouf, a stunning set of Arabic-tinged, self-penned instrumentals recorded in New York. It ranks among the UAE's top 20 best-selling albums of the past five years.
“I was planning my album for numerous years – before you do a thing, you can’t imagine it, it’s the end of the world,” says Afif of the new release. “But once you’ve done it, you realise you can do it again.”
Having jammed together in various bands, ARS Trio solidified last summer when they travelled to Armenia for a series of gigs. It was while they were there that Time was recorded, in just three days, live and directly onto analogue reel-to-reel tape at the former Soviet state-owned Melodiya studio.
“Everything was done in two or three takes – but usually we chose the first,” says Gasparyan.
The resulting performances capture the raw spirit of adventure – the joy of the musicians playing off one another – and some splendid solos, but things never stray too far from the finger-clicking soul-jazz idiom.
“It’s experimental, but not that experimental,” says Afif. “We still have our feet on the ground but there’s a lot of space for us to do stuff we don’t usually get to do.”
When, during a similar tour this summer, gigs in neighbouring Georgia were cancelled due to sudden floods, the band returned to the studio and laid down another album’s worth of material in a single day.
Before that sees the light of day, however, the trio want the world to find out about Time, with festival dates in Europe and North America in the works.
Closer to home, the band plan to debut the music from Time regionally at a future edition of For the Love of Jazz, a new monthly jazz night Afif will launch at Dubai's Blue Bar on Saturday, August 29. Alongside, of course, all the other corporate and bar gigs the life of a professional musician demands.
“For me, jazz is a personal thing – you don’t choose the music, it chooses you,” says Afif. “And once that mode of expression is in your hands, you can’t stop. You do all the other stuff to support it.”
• Find out more about ARS Trio and listen to their music at www.arturgrigoryan.com and www.ronyafif.com
rgarratt@thenational.ae
Tearful appearance
Chancellor Rachel Reeves set markets on edge as she appeared visibly distraught in parliament on Wednesday.
Legislative setbacks for the government have blown a new hole in the budgetary calculations at a time when the deficit is stubbornly large and the economy is struggling to grow.
She appeared with Keir Starmer on Thursday and the pair embraced, but he had failed to give her his backing as she cried a day earlier.
A spokesman said her upset demeanour was due to a personal matter.
UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
Benefits of first-time home buyers' scheme
- Priority access to new homes from participating developers
- Discounts on sales price of off-plan units
- Flexible payment plans from developers
- Mortgages with better interest rates, faster approval times and reduced fees
- DLD registration fee can be paid through banks or credit cards at zero interest rates
F1 The Movie
Starring: Brad Pitt, Damson Idris, Kerry Condon, Javier Bardem
Director: Joseph Kosinski
Rating: 4/5
COMPANY PROFILE
Name: Qyubic
Started: October 2023
Founder: Namrata Raina
Based: Dubai
Sector: E-commerce
Current number of staff: 10
Investment stage: Pre-seed
Initial investment: Undisclosed
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Asia Cup 2018 Qualifier
Sunday's results:
- UAE beat Malaysia by eight wickets
- Nepal beat Singapore by four wickets
- Oman v Hong Kong, no result
Tuesday fixtures:
- Malaysia v Singapore
- UAE v Oman
- Nepal v Hong Kong
UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
The Settlers
Director: Louis Theroux
Starring: Daniella Weiss, Ari Abramowitz
Rating: 5/5
A new relationship with the old country
Treaty of Friendship between the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and the United Arab Emirates
The United kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and the United Arab Emirates; Considering that the United Arab Emirates has assumed full responsibility as a sovereign and independent State; Determined that the long-standing and traditional relations of close friendship and cooperation between their peoples shall continue; Desiring to give expression to this intention in the form of a Treaty Friendship; Have agreed as follows:
ARTICLE 1 The relations between the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and the United Arab Emirates shall be governed by a spirit of close friendship. In recognition of this, the Contracting Parties, conscious of their common interest in the peace and stability of the region, shall: (a) consult together on matters of mutual concern in time of need; (b) settle all their disputes by peaceful means in conformity with the provisions of the Charter of the United Nations.
ARTICLE 2 The Contracting Parties shall encourage education, scientific and cultural cooperation between the two States in accordance with arrangements to be agreed. Such arrangements shall cover among other things: (a) the promotion of mutual understanding of their respective cultures, civilisations and languages, the promotion of contacts among professional bodies, universities and cultural institutions; (c) the encouragement of technical, scientific and cultural exchanges.
ARTICLE 3 The Contracting Parties shall maintain the close relationship already existing between them in the field of trade and commerce. Representatives of the Contracting Parties shall meet from time to time to consider means by which such relations can be further developed and strengthened, including the possibility of concluding treaties or agreements on matters of mutual concern.
ARTICLE 4 This Treaty shall enter into force on today’s date and shall remain in force for a period of ten years. Unless twelve months before the expiry of the said period of ten years either Contracting Party shall have given notice to the other of its intention to terminate the Treaty, this Treaty shall remain in force thereafter until the expiry of twelve months from the date on which notice of such intention is given.
IN WITNESS WHEREOF the undersigned have signed this Treaty.
DONE in duplicate at Dubai the second day of December 1971AD, corresponding to the fifteenth day of Shawwal 1391H, in the English and Arabic languages, both texts being equally authoritative.
Signed
Geoffrey Arthur Sheikh Zayed
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The more serious side of specialty coffee
While the taste of beans and freshness of roast is paramount to the specialty coffee scene, so is sustainability and workers’ rights.
The bulk of genuine specialty coffee companies aim to improve on these elements in every stage of production via direct relationships with farmers. For instance, Mokha 1450 on Al Wasl Road strives to work predominantly with women-owned and -operated coffee organisations, including female farmers in the Sabree mountains of Yemen.
Because, as the boutique’s owner, Garfield Kerr, points out: “women represent over 90 per cent of the coffee value chain, but are woefully underrepresented in less than 10 per cent of ownership and management throughout the global coffee industry.”
One of the UAE’s largest suppliers of green (meaning not-yet-roasted) beans, Raw Coffee, is a founding member of the Partnership of Gender Equity, which aims to empower female coffee farmers and harvesters.
Also, globally, many companies have found the perfect way to recycle old coffee grounds: they create the perfect fertile soil in which to grow mushrooms.
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Family reunited
Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe was born and raised in Tehran and studied English literature before working as a translator in the relief effort for the Japanese International Co-operation Agency in 2003.
She moved to the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies before moving to the World Health Organisation as a communications officer.
She came to the UK in 2007 after securing a scholarship at London Metropolitan University to study a master's in communication management and met her future husband through mutual friends a month later.
The couple were married in August 2009 in Winchester and their daughter was born in June 2014.
She was held in her native country a year later.
OPINIONS ON PALESTINE & ISRAEL
