Live Review: Emel Mathlouthi, Rahim Alhaj, Karim Wasfi

Conflict is the food of art.

All three musicians on stage tonight have experienced violence on a large scale. All three have incredible natural gifts, and all three have chosen to pursue a life of creativity and have found great success. As we sat on comfortable chairs in a beautiful auditorium, it was sobering to think that conflict brought this show into being. 

Rahim Alhaj is an oud player (like a lute) from Iraq. Like his counterparts, his adult life has largely been defined by activism, intellectualism and displacement. He was joined on stage by cellist and renowned conductor Karim Wasfi of the Iraqi National Symphony Orchestra. In 2015 Wasfi calmly stepped down into a car bomb crater in downtown Baghdad and played his cello. People gathered all through the day and into the evening, embracing and dancing. He was simply trying to "equalise" and "overcome" acts of terror with civility and refinement.

Their performance was broken into three main movements representing the opening of gates, the flooding of a city with terror and finally hope. These were elegant arrangements that focused on a slow shift from minimalist, bent-note mourning to lighter material that was almost Celtic in its lithe tonal shifts. Two solo movements followed, dominated by Wasfi's complex angular piece that found several motifs and gradually pushed them together. It was quietly transcendent.

Emel Mathlouthi is a Tunisian with a history of activism and poetry. She has been described as "the Tunisian Bjork", but she had more in common with Sinead O'Connor tonight. Her full-throated voice was as agile as it was beautiful. Her minimalist electronic-based set started off with an obscure Jeff Buckley cover (New Year's Prayer) and drifted off into pieces concerning refugees, violence, hope and other themes. She hung on to notes too long and it felt melodramatic in parts, but the purity of her voice and its message was difficult to fault. Mathlouthi finished up with War Child, a poignant The Cranberries cover as a moving tribute to the late Dolores O'Riordan.