Sabah Al Ani

Saxophonist, improviser, composer from Rennes (France). Electronics and telecommunications engineer. He studies extended playing techniques, contemplating the dimensions of timbre, polyphony, the harmonic spectrum and distortions. He studied classical saxophone at the Conservatoire de Rennes, as well as jazz and improvisation at the Conservatoires de Brest, Rennes and Montreuil, as well as completing his engineering studies.

He participated in workshops and learned from musicians such as Frédéric Briet, Olivier Benoit, Jacques Di Donato, Stéphane Payen, Amir El Saffar, Joëlle Léandre and others. He spent 3 years experimenting in Warsaw, where he joined the Warsaw Improvisers Orchestra, a large improvising group gathering musicians from various musical backgrounds.

He also joined the Krakow Improvisation Orchestra several times, broadening his knowledge of the Polish scene. He took part in experimental music meetings at various places in Warsaw (Chłodna25, Chmury, Eufemia, Ladom, Mózg), created performances with dancers (SzurSure collective) and conducted workshops exploring musicians’ ways of interacting with sounds made by dancers and their body language. Sabah also recorded the album “Reductions” released by the Portuguese label Creative Sources (cs437) with the Italian guitarist Lucio Tasca and the Polish drummer Wojtek Kurek.

In 2016, he started his solo project, collecting various idiomatic influences - contemporary, classical jazz, maqam, noise. He explores extended techniques on the alto saxophone, focusing on the internal possibilities of this instrument as an extension of his voice. He approaches the cognitive aspects of his own binaural perception of imaginary and emitted sound in accordance with the space in which the solo takes place. The key idea is to offer site-specific performance while playing with the dimensions of timbre, polyphony, harmonic spectrum, distortion and voice. The idea is for the audience to reflect on sound as an organic material, generating personal emotional and sensory interpretations.

Soundcloud