Qais Essar’s new EP, Letters To My Best Friend – three heartfelt, unique tracks that accentuate Essar’s love of the rabab and diversity as a composer.
On Letters To My Brief Friend, Essar draws influence from musicians from East and West alike, from Steve Reich’s compositional flair, to the soaring vocals of Afghanistan’s Ustad Sarahang; from the melancholic folk of Nick Drake and Devendra Banhart; to the legendary classical sarod of Ustad Ali Akbar Khan. The result is a sublime instrumental narrative which envelops listeners with nuance, depth and emotional power.
“With every release I am still ever so trying to push the rabab instrument to new limits, sonically along with my approach to playing it,” says Essar. “Be it giving departing from the traditional staccato style of play and creating a vocal style, where I try to emulate the human voice, or new techniques that I picked up from other instruments. The Hurt features the first time where you can hear tapping on the rabab. This along with the use of harmonics, triads, etc, I lifted from guitar. Compositionally it is still continuing the conversation forward that my rabab has had with the world around us – blazing the middle path between worlds, drawing from my experiences with both eastern and western classical, prog, freak folk, and jazz.”
Letters to My Best Friend’s first single tells a tale of broken promises and isolation, spoken through a bittersweet performance of rabab, cello, soft drumming and more. Titled To Mars And Back, Essar’s compositional storytelling returns in fine form – creating enough space between each instrument to let each one tell its own tale. The string instruments in the background sing sorrowfully, the rabab clucks with cautious optimism and the drumming adds a damp pacing to the music; thus creating a rounded journey of sound, mood and movement.
“To Mars and Back is the first single for the EP,” says Essar. “The title is based on a promise that I made a long time ago. I remember writing this during the what felt like what the loneliest time in my life. I had moved away into the mountains and I was all alone, in a self-imposed exile, severing all ties. The only person I did want close to me had already slipped away as well, sparing herself from what I had become. It was a dreadfully cold winter that extended clear into spring. This was the first piece written of this new work, inspired by that beginning ukulele line in the beginning. I had only been playing ukulele two days when I wrote this. It’s the one that sat with me the longest, so I have a special affinity for it.”
Essar’s penchant for instrumental storytelling captures the imagination in a far more powerful way than words ever could, possibly the reason behind his continued success in music, film and theatre. His accomplishments include a Canadian Screen Award for Best Achievement in Music, composing for Golden Globe and Oscar nominated film The Breadwinner – directed by Nora Twomey and produced by Angelina Jolie – along with working on performance musicals and live theatre in Brooklyn, New York where his talents generate a wistful atmosphere second to none. Again, on Letters to My Best Friend, Essar continues to evolve his award-winning style of playing to new heights – spectacularly covering new forms of instrumental, compositional and emotional diversity in the process.
Qais Essar’s new EP Letters To My Best Friend releases on October 25th. The first single from the EP, To Mars and Back, is available for streaming now.
