Wanees Zarour, Silwan Review

Modal Architecture With Tempered Jazz Structures: Wanees Zarour’s Silwan

By Nolan Debuke

In Silwan, Wanees Zarour undertakes a creative structural task of integrating maqam-based modal language into a modern jazz harmonic framework without diluting either system. The achievement of this record lies in its aesthetic hybridity, with stylistic overlay, and in the engineering of microtonal tension and resolution within a tempered ensemble environment. What emerges is an experience of modal integrity within a harmonic texture, full of fun surprises.

Zarour (buzuq, oud, percussion) undertakes this maqam-based modal language with an ensemble configured to make that negotiation viable: Bryan Pardo (alto saxophone, clarinet), Catie Hickey (trombone), Samuel Mosching (guitar), Vinny Kabat (bass), Andrew Lawrence (piano, keys, synthesizers), Nick Kabat (drums), and Tareq Rantisi (percussion).

This instrumentation is not incidental. It creates the conditions for tempered harmonic infrastructure (piano, guitar, bass), flexible voicing distribution (saxophone, clarinet, trombone), and layered rhythmic grounding (drums and percussion) against which microtonal modal language can operate with clarity rather than distortion.

The core question animating the album is how can maqam-derived pitch hierarchies, complete with microtonal inflection and non-Western resolution gravity, function coherently within a rhythm section grounded in equal temperament? Zarour’s answer is not to neutralize the maqam system, but to design support structures around it.

Across the album, modal tension is generative. Zarour uses composition and his instruments, the buzuq and oud, to establish scalar frameworks that imply intervallic relationships outside tempered equivalence. These microtonal inflections, particularly in upper tetrachord motion, create pitch friction against the piano’s fixed harmonic grid.

In “Silwan,” the title track, Zarour’s buzuq offers a microtonal inflection functions as active harmonic tension rather than surface coloration. Zarour articulates scalar degrees that resist full alignment with equal-tempered chord tones, creating pitch friction against the ensemble’s harmonic grid. Resolution does not occur through dominant assertion, but through negotiated convergence: tempered instruments clarify chord-tone reference at cadential points, allowing the microtonal line to settle into harmonic alignment without erasing its modal contour. The effect is structural rather than decorative, modal tension is engineered into the harmonic system and resolved through tempered stabilization rather than functional progression.

This pattern recurs throughout the album compositionally and in the solos. Microtonal tension is permitted to bloom; resolution is negotiated rather than imposed.

Zarour’s buzuq and oud articulate modal complexity; Kobat’s bass, Moschino’s guitar, and Lawrence’s piano function as structural ballast. Their role is open functional harmony in a jazz sense that creates zones of harmonic coherence that allow modal asymmetry to remain legible.

On “Lifta,” the ensemble outlines stable tonal centers as the upper structures trace modal shapes that resist standard major/minor classification. The piano’s voicings tend toward spacing and transparency. The ensemble clarifying harmonic density when modal tension increases. This is strategic. By aligning vertical information, the ensemble preserves the intervallic specificity of the maqam-derived material. Lawrence’s synthesizer solo uses a pitch wheel to match the colors. Zarour’s oud solo defines the modal structure perfectly.

In “Autumn,” harmonic grounding becomes more pronounced. One hears clearer points of convergence between modal contour and tempered chord structure. In these passages, the harmonic resolution feels surprising and unique. The ensemble lands together, but the scalar logic retains its own internal gravity. Resolution is shared at key moments in the composition to allow the colors to be absorbed.

Improvisation across Silwan demonstrates disciplined navigation of maqam-derived contours inside a jazz ensemble logic. The soloists do not default to idiomatic bebop vocabulary over modal backdrops; instead, they contour their lines to the scalar architecture established by the head material.

In “Fig Tree,” Zarour’s oud solo closely tracks the modal cell introduced in the head, reinforcing scalar identity rather than departing from it. Instead of expanding through chromatic substitution, he intensifies internal modal degrees, rearticulating structurally significant tones with rhythmic variation while preserving the established pitch hierarchy. Beneath him, Lawrence provides chordal density, frequently spacing voicings to avoid strong third definition, while Kabat maintains a centered bass orientation that resists functional pull. The resulting tension is horizontal rather than vertical: intervallic emphasis shifts within the scalar field, but the modal framework remains structurally intact.

Similarly, “Cold City” features a layered contrapuntal passage led by Bryan Pardo’s alto saxophone, where tempered harmonic support briefly tightens beneath the melodic line. As the ensemble thickens, Hickey’s trombone introduces a flowing counterpoint reference. Kabat’s and Zarour’s solos have phrases that pivot around characteristic modal intervals established earlier in the composition, sustaining scalar allegiance even as harmonic density increases. Catie Hickey’s trombone enters in counterpoint, reinforcing shared pitch material rather than stacking functional harmony. The modal identity holds because the ensemble distributes vertical implication across voices instead of compressing it into chordal assertion.

The ensemble’s success lies in its refusal to treat maqam as color. It is treated as system. Counterpoint and voicing as modal protection are a defining feature of the album. The use of counterpoint and ensemble voicing to protect modal clarity. Rather than stacking dense chords beneath the melody, the ensemble frequently distributes harmonic implication across voices, letting the buzuq and oud ring their characteristic tones.

In “Anthem,” contrapuntal interplay becomes especially significant. Supporting lines shadow or answer the primary modal statement, reinforcing its scalar contour without doubling it in strict parallelism. This layered writing prevents harmonic overdetermination. The modal structure remains audible because it is supported laterally, not compressed vertically.

Even in an ensemble passage where obvious jazz sonorities are flowing, voicing choices are structurally sensitive to the modal color moments. Open fifths, suspended intervals, and quartal shapes provide harmonic scaffolding that does not overwrite microtonal nuance. The engineering of each section of the composition is a subtle but deliberate expression of East meets West hues.

The album’s achievement is its management of resolution. In Western harmonic practice, resolution is often teleological and function-driven. In Silwan, resolution is modal and relational. Cadential moments frequently emerge not through dominant–tonic assertion but through scalar return that reestablishes the modal tonic by contour and emphasis rather than by  leading-tone necessity. The rhythm section of Vinny Kabat, Lawrence, Mosching, Nick Kabat, and Rantisi, supports these returns by narrowing harmonic ambiguity at key structural junctures. Rather than intensifying texture, the drums and percussion stabilize groove and dynamic contours to shape the flow to cadential moments, allowing scalar re-centering to function as resolution without dominant-driven assertion.

Silwan succeeds in merging maqam and jazz into a seamless hybrid aesthetic. The ensemble and compositions stage an ongoing negotiation between systems. Microtonal inflection meets tempered harmony; scalar gravity encounters chordal infrastructure. The ensemble’s discipline of anchoring and improvisational contouring ensures that the maqam framework remains structurally authoritative.

The album offers a compelling case study in modal integration under harmonic constraint. It demonstrates that microtonal systems flow into Western harmonic logic and function inside a jazz ensemble. They can be structurally upheld if the architecture around them is engineered with precision.

In that sense, Silwan is a stylistic statement of harmonic design.  A record where modal integrity can coexist with modern jazz infrastructure when the ensemble commits to structural clarity above all else.