Parma Jazz Frontiere Festival

Maurseth’s haunting vocal incantation over a circling fiddle motif, tinged with Haj Yousef’s gently keening Oriental colors, made for a striking opening. Bucolic meditations with slow but steady heartbeats, unhurried improvisations on melodies of simple beauty, haunting laments and plaintive tone poems followed.

The pair spun a web of spare, beguiling music, with spiritual resonance in the wings, in an ideal setting. Pure magic!

Benedicte Maurseth (Hardanger fiddle, voice)
Jasser Haj Youssef (viola d’amore)