Weary, jet-lagged and without a single note of music prepared, the musicians soon to be dubbed the World Peace Trio stepped off three planes from three places, meeting for the first time, and headed into the studio a few hours later. They emerged that evening with the bulk of a self-titled debut album: a stunning set of improvised, intuitive and instrumental landscapes. Ironically, by the time this music would be heard by the public, two years later, the viability of the group’s peace-seeking message would already be in jeopardy.
That trio comprised British political activist and woodwind firebrand Gilad Atzmon, Indonesian piano maestro and composer Dwiki Dharmawan, and UAE-based Jordanian oud and guitar fusionist Kamal Musallam. Individually renowned for channelling their distinct musical heritage through the prism of jazz, each soloist is a celebrated bandleader with an extensive back catalogue.
While offstage drama means there is a distinct possibility this all-star trio might never play again, for fleeting moments their disparate voices, visions and egos were balanced in this singularly spellbinding union, thankfully captured on the excellent World Peace Trio album.
Of course, such a controlled conflagration could only be the result of design, not luck. The group was hand-picked by MoonJune Records founder Leonardo Pavkovic for a one-off festival appearance. The day before that gig, at the Kota Tua Jakarta Jazz Festival in October 2015, studio time was booked.
The sonics Pavkovic dreamed up were particularly utopian. Musallam is renowned for his wiggly, fret-crunching jazz-rock fusion, translating Arabic scales onto blistering, distorted electric guitar. These are perhaps best captured on his 2008 album Out of My City, a love letter to the 47-year-old’s adopted home of Dubai.
Dharmawan, meanwhile, filters Javanese gamelan traditions through hypnotic piano harmonies, assimilating broader Eastern influences on his recent double-disc spectacle Pasar Klewer. That 2017 release also features Atzmon, a prolific superstar of the European jazz scene since winning the BBC Jazz Album of the Year for 2003’s Exile. Renowned for filtering klezmer, Balkan, Turkish and tango inflections through his searing bebop saxophone workouts, Atzmon has also been a member of The Blockheads for two decades, recorded a pair of LPs with Robert Wyatt and was called in to play on Pink Floyd’s 2014 swansong, The Endless River.
Meeting musically for the first time in a crusty old studio attached to Jakarta’s Komunitas Salihara culture centre, with a skeleton crew of one engineer, this perplexing trio jammed with little direction or dialogue, locked into an implicitly telepathic discourse. Joined sparingly by local Indonesian percussionists Ade Rudiana and Nasser Salameh, the stark soundscapes conjured are marked by wide open spaces – simple hypnotic vamps, both soothing and spiritual. They offer each player ample space to stretch out on soulful, searching solos that recall wandering across an open terrain without any destination reached, or even in mind.
A promotional video on the band’s website captures the very first notes the trio played together: the session begins with Musallam spinning out a series of airy, rumbling oud runs, before Atzmon picks up his clarinet and lets forth a poignant, meditative cry, setting the tone for the sympathetic, spontaneous dialogue to come.
The trio reunited two months later (in December 2015) at the Bali World Music Festival. “After the gig, we looked at each other and said: ‘Let’s do another session, but in a different way,’” says Musallam. “A different studio, a different time, a different place.” Perhaps inspired by Atzmon’s unique, amplified “electronic clarinet”, this time, Musallam broke out his electric guitar – a special signature model designed for Ibanez, with extra frets to voice the quarter tones distinct to Arabic music.
Dharmawan, meanwhile, switched to electronic keys, and star drummer Asaf Sirkis, formally a member of Atzmon’s trailblazing Orient House Ensemble for close to a decade, was brought in to offer a stronger percussive pulse.
Having amassed close to six hours of music from the two dates, an album was proposed. Here, however, the first cracks began to appear within the band itself: while all agreed about the quality of what was captured, there was little such cohesion about which parts of the sprawling, improvised stew should be used.
“We ended up with so much music, we were listening for many, many months to whittle it down to 60 minutes – and just throw the rest in the garbage,” says Musallam. They eventually agreed to tracklist the five spontaneous lengthy jams alongside the Palestinian traditional Ramallah, Atzmon’s Gaza Mon Amour – which also opens the Orient House’s eighth LP The Whistle Blower, released last year – and a conspicuous, turned-on-its-head take of Duke Ellington’s In a Sentimental Mood. But in the meantime, the proposed record company had gone bust, and when the band reconvened in summer this year for their first European tour, ahead of the album’s eventual release on Enja, the cracks would deepen.
Personality clashes were exacerbated by the polarising presence of Atzmon on European soil. Since fleeing his homeland in 1994, and denouncing his Israeli citizenship, the 54-year-old has led a second career as an outspoken anti-Zionist essayist and commentator, authoring such charged tracts as 2011’s bestseller The Wandering Who? This vehement critique of Jewish identity, politics and culture has made Atzmon’s concerts the target of boycotts, protests and lobbying.
The stress buckled when a concert at one of the prominent European jazz festivals had to be cancelled due to external pressure. “We got paid for it, but it was heavy on the band – morally and viably,” Atzmon explains. “You have to be strong to play with me, and know deep in your own heart that what I’m doing is a peaceful approach. I wasn’t convinced we had this energy between us. All these [European] gigs were on my back, based on my reputation – I don’t see myself doing that again,” he adds.
“The answer is, because you’re searching for that special thing – that magic of music,” he concludes.