Anouar Brahem began writing Le pas du chat noir without his oud

Anouar Brahem once told pianist François Couturier that “the overtone is sometimes more important than the tone.” It is a fitting instruction for an album written away from the instrument its leader is known for.

After recording Thimar with John Surman and Dave Holland in 1997, Brahem found himself reluctant to play the oud for the first time. He kept writing, at a piano in his Tunis studio. He is “not really a piano player,” he says, but he was using it “as a pen – to write modal music.” The piano offered “another sonority,” free of the Arabic associations he hears in the oud.

ECM producer Manfred Eicher encouraged him to develop those early themes, and it took a couple of years for the music to settle. The oud came back gradually, discreetly at first. Sometimes singing the melodies at the piano, Brahem realised he needed a sustaining, more linear sound. He considered cello briefly, then turned to accordionist Jean-Louis Matinier, who, in Brahem's words, “didn't want to do more than the music requires.” Couturier had been Brahem's collaborator since 1985.

Even for such experienced players the music was hard. Every tempo marking and pianissimo had to be respected, yet the playing had to sound improvised. They recorded in July 2001 at Radio Studio DRS in Zürich without headphones and mixed the album months later; ECM released it in September 2002.

On the title track, listen less for the tune than for what the notes leave behind. Brahem says the piano's overtones sometimes remind him of the santur, the hammered zither of Iranian music.