COMPOSERS: Various
LABELS: Network
WORKS: World
PERFORMER: Alim Qasimov (voice), etc
CATALOGUE NO: 34.411
If you sought out Network’s box of tributes to Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan from this magazine’s best CDs of 1998, you’ll already know ALIM QASIMOV. His is another of the great voices of the day, with a comparable intensity of feeling to Nusrat’s, a more lithe and focused technique and an astonishing pitch range.
The new release, which includes the two tribute songs and seven other tracks, finds the Azerbaijani singer in his prime. Accompanied by an ensemble of plucked and bowed strings, wind and percussion, he has developed the classical mugham tradition in his own way and now shares the singing with his daughter Ferghana Qasimova, a formidable, dramatic talent already at the age of 20. Some of these numbers generate blazing power at a sustained, driving pace. Any lover of the human voice, of whatever persuasion from rap to opera, will find him overwhelming.