Anouar Brahem brings four decades of reshaping the oud for a jazz setting to the Barbican Hall, in a quartet performance for the EFG London Jazz Festival.
The oud player Anouar Brahem, who has recorded with Jan Garbarek and Dave Holland, plays After the Last Sky at the Barbican Centre on Sunday 15 November 2026. Django Bates, Anja Lechner and Mats Eilertsen join him.
Brahem was born in 1957 in Halfaouine, inside the old medina of Tunis. He studied the oud at the national conservatory, then privately with the master Ali Sriti, and left for Paris in 1981.
The oud is the Arab lute, fretless and quiet, and long settled inside Arab classical music. Brahem writes for it as a composer and sets it beside European jazz musicians, a pairing he refuses to call fusion. He has recorded for the same German label since the early 1990s.
After the Last Sky, the record behind this tour, came out in March 2025. Its title comes from a line by the poet Mahmoud Darwish. The London date is part of the EFG London Jazz Festival, in the Barbican Hall.
Django Bates, who has recorded with Brahem before, plays piano. Anja Lechner plays cello and Mats Eilertsen double bass, making the evening chamber music for four players.