It all starts with the voice. At turns heavy and hulkingly powerful, yet agile and pointedly precise, Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan’s vocal not only embodies the tradition of the Sufi qawwali but it is the emotive essence of singing itself.

ZEHRA is proud to present the debut album ISTEHLAL by the MOHAMAD ZATARI TRIO, consisting of musicians from Syria, Iran & India. The trio merges traditional Middle Eastern sounds with contemporary vibes incl. interpretations of Hossein Alizadeh & Riad Al-Sunbati classics.

There is both seriousness and ecstasy on Moksha's second album. There are complex and virtuosic moments, but it also feels like music that arose from the simplest of all starting points, the play between three good fellow musicians. The trio's unique interplay began back in 2012, when they were still students and met to experiment with rhythm, raga and jazz. Their first album, “The Beauty of an Arbitrary Moment”, was released by Jazzland in 2016 and was very well received both at home and abroad. Their debut stands as a key release from a period in Norwegian improvised music characterized by open doors to expression and musicians from all over the world.

Popular brass-led ensemble, Kolonel Djafaar, unveiled its second album, ‘Getaway’, their first for Batov Records, seamlessly blending Afrobeat, Ethio jazz, and psych rock, whilst showcasing the band's evolution over the past couple of years.

In 2024, the singer and songwriter Oum celebrates her fifteen-year career with a live album recorded in Marrakech, which plunges back into the magic of her three flagship records, here revisited in a different light. This seventh album, named Dakchi, which means "those things," is the opportunity for this daring off-roader to allow herself a suspended moment for a temporary assessment, a return to her roots. Dakchi is the first best-of live album, in which Oum brings together around ten titles from her repertoire woven throughout three albums with identities as singular as they are filled with a common sap: "Soul of Morocco" (2013), "Zarabi" (2015), and "Daba" (2019).

Amorosa, a multicultural musical band based in Brussels, is driven by the voice of Stéphanie Scultore who sings about love in French and Portuguese, drawing us into her poetry between the warmth of Brazilian rhythms and the elegance of jazz harmonies. Amorosa's music is generous. Sometimes voluble, sometimes calm. At once intimate and universal, it draws its uniqueness and its modernity from the way it mixes genres, textures and registers while drawing on popular traditions. Petit Soleil is an album full of love and humor

Psychedelic music born from jams with a lush groove of drums and percussion, a dense foundation of keys and bass, and flute and guitar soaring above them. The septet from Moscow experiments with genres, entering the territory of prog rock, blues rock, stoner and funk.

The joint album presents eight tracks written by Yinon Muallem and Saman Alia. The diverse musical repertoire draws its inspiration from the Maquam music of the Middle East and uses elements of jazz. They are joined by guest musicians from Sweden and Israel, who contribute their very own influences to a fascinating overall sound. For their joint album "2gether", the duo traveled through Israel and Turkey, where the music was created and the two formed a connection that would go far beyond the music on the album.

Three years after their debut recording In the Wake of Memories, Wassim Mukdad, David Rothenberg and Volker Lankow went back into Studio Wong, Berlin to reflect musically and spiritually on the power of beauty in a time of war. Wassim Mukdad is an oud master and medical doctor from Syria.

This project is a desire, a wish and a dream that I have had for years: as a child, I was already fascinated by the orchestras I heard in films: the violins, the brass, the harmony… This is the result of a fundamental quest for "musical ecstasy", the "tarab", this feeling of astonishment, this aesthetic emotion, between bliss, delight and ecstasy that one feels when listening to music.

Recorded live at his 2019 Sydney Opera House showcase, this album takes you on a rollicking ride through Joseph’s milestone Concerto for Oud & Orchestra. Listeners are also treated to another nine of his most popular pieces that straddle the worlds of classical, jazz and world music. Upon release in June 2020, Live at the Sydney Opera House ran to the #1 position on the ARIA Classical charts, becoming the first release by an Australian artist to reach the top spot since 2019. Alongside his brother James Tawadros on Egyptian percussion, with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra conducted by maestro Benjamin Northey, Joseph creates sounds and moods like you have never heard before.

The third album from Levon Eskenian’s remarkable ensemble is its most adventurous to date. As well as reclaiming the music of esoteric teacher G. I. Gurdjieff for folk instrumentation, Zartir situates Gurdjieff in a tradition of Armenian bards and troubadours including Ashugh Jivani, Baghdasar Tbir and the legendary Sayat-Nova. In parallel, an emphasis on pieces for sacred dance reaches its apex in The Great Prayer, an entrancing collaboration between the Gurdjieff Ensemble and the National Chamber Choir of Armenia, which draws upon ritual music of multiple faiths.

The internationally acclaimed Berlin-based Ethno-jazz band LELÉKA, dedicated to reviving ancient Ukrainian folk songs since its inception in 2016, presents its new album Rizdvo at the end of November. Together with the famous Ukrainian flutist Maksym Berezhniuk, virtuoso and collector of traditional woodwind instruments, the ensemble creates an extraordinary hom-mage to the incredibly rich tradition of Ukrainian Christmas music, breathing new life into it with contemporary arrangements, interpretations and improvisations.

In Nowruz, their accomplished debut album, the Aga Khan Master Musicians (AKMM) draw on music from Central Asia, China, the Middle East, and North Africa to create a strikingly original body of work where living musical traditions meet and meld. Acclaimed virtuosos on their respective instruments, the six members of AKMM deftly blend pipa, qanun, dutar, viola d’amore, saxophone, and a panoply of percussion into a soulful new musical language that comes alive in these eloquent performances.

“Júlio Resende has the profound ability to reinvent Portugal’s trademark deep, emotional music through the piano,” says the respected world music magazine Songlines of the Portuguese pianist/composer. Resende’s concept of Fado Jazz is a perfect example of how jazz has become a global language for free musical expression – a concept which has been fundamental to ACT ever since its foundation over 30 years ago.