Wanees Zarour | SILWAN Review

by Illiam Sebitz

Wanees Zarour’s SILWAN is a combination of jazz and maqam. Zarour’s approach is to give his ensemble shared musical materials rather than a single required vocabulary.

Across SILWAN, modal cells, rhythmic motives, pedal tones, contrapuntal lines, metric shifts, and ensemble figures pass between musicians who interpret them through different instrumental traditions. Zarour’s oud and buzuq do not merely supply Middle Eastern color to a jazz ensemble, and the horns do not simply wrap jazz harmony around Arabic melodies. A phrase can begin as a maqam-inflected melodic idea, move into contrapuntal horn writing, become part of a rhythmic exchange with percussion, and later reappear inside improvisation without losing its identity.

That approach gives SILWAN an unusual coherence. Zarour, who composed and arranged all seven pieces, leads East Loop through music in which difference remains audible while the ensemble functions as a unified organism. East Loop itself describes the project in terms of bringing jazz and maqam together while expanding the parameters of both. The music makes that ambition concrete: Zarour is concerned not simply with which traditions are present, but with what composition and improvisation can make them do together.

“Lifta” has the piano introducing the texture before guitar, horns, bass, and Zarour’s plucked-string voice gradually form the larger ensemble sound. Middle Eastern sonorities inhabit an arrangement organized through layered entrances, background figures, sectional writing, and harmonic movement.

At the heart of the matter is the interaction within the ensemble. Zarour’s percussive attack becomes part of the time feel alongside Vinny Kabat’s bass, Nick Kabat’s drums, and Tareq Rantisi’s percussion. Bryan Pardo and Catie Hickey are part of horn writing that moves independently around the central melody, creating contrapuntal activity instead of a simple melody-and-background relationship.

A repeated-note figure eventually leads into synthesizer material, but the keyboard does not abandon the modal environment for a generic electronic texture. Pitch inflection keeps the synth connected to the Middle Eastern tonal character already established elsewhere in the arrangement.

The improvisation develops the same principle. A rhythmic motive moves between Zarour and the percussion while the rhythm section responds to increasing intensity rather than merely holding a fixed accompaniment. As the solo rises in register and rhythmic density, the percussion becomes more active. The metric expansion consequently feels like an enlargement of existing material rather than a new idea imposed on it.

The writing aligns the improvisations, letting them grow naturally from Zarour’s melodic and harmonic premises. “Lifta” shows how the improvisation does not interrupt the composition to create a separate solo environment. It develops material.

A tutti passage eventually resets the ensemble. Horn stabs create an opening for trombone before contrapuntal lines spread through the ensemble again. Jazz-derived voicings coexist with a modal environment that retains its Middle Eastern character. Neither side has to disappear for the other to function.

“Fig Tree” has a melodic scale of interest, which becomes especially important. Half-step relationships produce tensions against the jazz harmony beneath them, while descending figures move through the ensemble in unison and across different sections. Modal language is therefore not confined to the featured melody; it helps organize the composition.

The rhythmic feel is equally difficult to reduce to one category. There is swing, but not the propulsion of a conventional hard-bop setting. The pulse has a broader character shaped by percussion and by the placement of the melody against the rhythm section. Jazz is heard especially strongly in the harmony, horn voicings, sectional responses, and relationships between chord movement and melodic tones.

Samuel Mösching’s guitar solo illustrates how naturally the two sides can interact. His solo builds on the established pitch language as he works directly with the modal colors already shaping the composition. Reverb and delay expand the guitar sound without obscuring its natural character, while the phrasing remains that of an improvising guitarist.

The return to ensemble writing reinforces the point. Call-and-response figures move among instrumental groups before Zarour’s string voice again assumes melodic prominence amid contrapuntal horn lines. The arrangement keeps changing speakers without losing the underlying musical identity.

That ability to redistribute material is exemplified on the expansive “Anthem.” The piece begins by layering horns into a jazz voicing before guitar, percussion, and Zarour enter. Its opening melody has a long scalar flow as countermelodies gradually accumulate around it. Despite the increasing contrapuntal density, individual parts remain clear because Zarour carefully defines entrances, exits, and sustained layers.

A snare figure announces another feel. The bass moves toward quicker sixteenth-note activity. A Latin-jazz overtone enters. Zarour exchanges figures with the horns. A unified band passage closes one section before the horns become more conversational, trading phrases over the rhythm section.

“Anthem” does not sound like a collection of unrelated episodes because its transformations continue to draw from common pitch and rhythmic material.

Mösching expands the palette further, moving from clean, funk-inflected strumming toward a more distorted guitar sound as the drums become increasingly active. The texture changes substantially, but the characteristic modal colors remain present within his treatment of the harmony.

An example of transformation comes with a pedal tone beneath Andrew Lawrence’s keyboard improvisation. At first, the pedal supplies a stable floor as Lawrence increases the rhythmic and harmonic activity above it. His playing separates into bass-register movement, interior layers, and an active upper-register solo voice before gradually loosening the harmony surrounding the sustained pitch.

When Zarour reenters, the same pedal takes on another role. What had functioned as a harmonic anchor beneath a keyboard improvisation can now be heard as a drone beneath a Middle Eastern string voice. One sustained pitch has served two musical functions.

That small transformation captures much of the intelligence behind SILWAN. Zarour does not need to label each passage jazz or Arabic, nor does he manufacture a stylistically neutral territory between them. The same musical object can behave differently according to who is using it and what the ensemble builds around it.

The rhythmic relationship among Zarour, Rantisi, and Nick Kabat operates similarly. Percussion and drum kit are not assigned neatly separated cultural responsibilities. They answer, layer, and increase activity together. During the later improvisation on “Anthem,” their conversation helps generate metric development around Zarour rather than simply accompanying him.

By the closing section, sixteenth-note motion, layered percussion, syncopated figures, and a polyrhythmic melodic idea accumulate toward the final cadence. The density rises without obscuring the architecture because the entrances, exits, repetitions, and sustained layers remain clear. That clarity is central to the album.

With an ensemble containing buzuq, oud, saxophone, clarinet, trombone, guitar, bass, piano, keyboards, drums, and percussion, SILWAN could easily have treated its instrumental palette as the concept. Zarour instead makes those instruments participants in a larger compositional argument.

The album’s connection to Palestinian musical identity and Zarour’s roughly two decades of musical life in Chicago gives that argument additional resonance. Place, memory, belonging, and longing belong to the project’s documented conception, but SILWAN does not require those ideas to remain abstract. They have musical consequences. Maqam retains its characteristic pitch language and phrasing. Jazz harmony retains its own logic. Improvisation stays open. Counterpoint remains active. Rhythm is negotiated collectively.

No tradition needs to become decoration for the ensemble to become unified. That is what makes SILWAN more than a meeting of styles. Zarour creates coherence by giving his musicians enough common material to communicate while leaving enough room for their musical languages to remain recognizable. The question posed at the beginning, how musicians working from different musical languages can improvise together without surrendering their distinctions, is answered in the construction of the music.

They do not need to speak the same language when they have learned how to share the same musical ideas.

Artist: Wanees Zarour
Album: SILWAN
Label: Levantine Music

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Release Date: February 13, 2026

About the author

Illiam Sebitz

Born and raised in a picturesque European village, my fondness for music began during my formative years, when the charismatic tones of the recorder first filled the halls of my primary school. This early fascination escalated into my lifelong pursuit of embracing the melodious charm of the flute; I have even spent time refining my skills at a music conservatoire. As a seasoned music connoisseur, I find myself captivated by the multifaceted world of music. I enjoy writing music reviews to better enable me to explore genres as diverse as world, rock, jazz, classical, folk, and film music, each offering a unique auditory journey that enriches my life and intellect.

In my spare moments, you'll likely find me meticulously crafting my latest woodworking project, sharpening my skills with flute etudes, or inventing tales of fantasy through the art of creative writing. My eclectic interests and expertise harmonize to create a symphony of passion and curiosity that resonates within every aspect of my life as a music enthusiast.