Ayman Fanous and Tomas Ulrich Duo

Guitarist/bouzouki player Ayman Fanous and cellist Tomas Ulrich met while both were playing in Simon Shaheen’s Near East Music Ensemble and quickly realized they had a mutual love of free improvisation. Middle Eastern classical music provided a common point of reference, given flamenco’s Arabic roots, Fanous’ Egyptian ancestry, and Ulrich’s discovery of a more profound musical emotionality in this repertoire. They soon began giving regular performances of duo improvisation. The chemistry was immediately evident, as two unique combinations of collective musical memory ran against one another, collided, and embraced. The duo explores the nexus of jazz, contemporary classical composition, flamenco, and world musics in previously unheard ways, including a number of technical innovations. Their 2007 CD “Labyrinths” was described as “the benchmark for all cello-guitar duo recordings” (Signal to Noise), which “reflects the greater depths and perspectives that can only be created by musicians with a vast vocabulary of the world’s musical languages (Erik Quick, allaboutjazz.com).”