RAYHAN's debut album Fragrance released on May 14, 2021, on Aire' Records.
"Traditional Syrian melody meets free improv jazz with Emad Armoush
Armoush is equally known for being an incredible flamenco guitarist, vocalist, oud and ney player. Now, he presents Fragrance—his first album as a leader with his longtime Vancouver free improv group Rayhan. The group features Armoush on all aforementioned instruments. JP Carter features on trumpet and electronics, Jesse Zubot on violin and electronics, Francois Houle on clarinet and bass clarinet and Kenton Loewen on drums. Perennial collaborators, all of the members of Rayhan can also be found playing in Gordon Grdina’s Haram. Armoush et al use Fragrance to travel through space and time and introduce traditional Syrian melody to its great-great grandchild: free improv jazz music. It’s a perfect example of an artist allowing the intrinsic influences absorbed from their culture to take the reins while simultaneously focusing on the creation of something brand new. The result is an album where the feeling of playfulness exists on the same plane as reverence." -Rhythm Changes
Emad Armoush's Duos album Electritradition released November 01, 2023, on Drip Audio.
Press
"On the new album Electritradition, Emad Armoush's Duos project explores exile, community, and how to live in a war-torn world." - Stir
"The recording is beautifully rendered with plenty of space to truly appreciate the instrumental skills of all involved…" - Vancouver Sun
"…when Armoush partners with experienced improvisers the result is a dramatic blend of West Coast and Middle East." - The Whole Note
"This music is deeply moving, often somber, sometimes discordant, sometimes hopeful, but always appealing to that range of yielding and interpersonally connective emotions… This album is a real achievement.” - The Free Jazz Collective
"World music meets (freely) improvised music meets electronics. ‘Electritradition’ is a gorgeous example of a successful marriage between the three. The recording, mixing and mastering are excellent: as a listener, you feel surrounded by the musicians and in the centre of the music. I can recommend this release wholeheartedly." - Vital Weekly
"What is more intimate than a duet? At its best, this most revealing of musical formats can be a true meeting of minds, and when the duo partners are friends as well as colleagues, an extra layer of warmth is usually apparent. That’s especially audible on ElectriTradition, in which Damascus-born, Vancouver-based multi-instrumentalist Emad Armoush teams up with friends old and new to explore 10 soulful and inventive sonic landscapes. All five of Armoush’s guests—clarinetist Francois Houle, violinist Jesse Zubot, drummer Kenton Loewen, trumpet player JP Carter, and cellist Marina Hasselberg—enter fully into his world, just as he enhances theirs. Every pairing emerges fully formed, no matter how disparate the contributors, making for a deliciously varied but ultimately coherent whole.
The opening and closing numbers deserve special mention, however. Both feature Houle, and while the classically trained clarinetist’s gorgeous tone and instrumental mastery are readily apparent, so too is the deep respect that he and Armoush have for each other. Whether creating uncanny electronically enhanced backdrops for Armoush’s oud on “Ya Rayah” or employing real-time double-tracking and key percussion on the moody, flamenco-inspired guitar showcase “Eye to Eye”, Houle displays his ability to listen deeply, while Armoush proves that he can’t be confined to stereotypical concepts of Arabic music.
String virtuoso and studio wizard Zubot is especially inspired on another of Armoush’s guitar compositions, “Warrior’s Dance”, weaving layers of otherworldly harmonics, oud-like plucking, and unnerving grinding noises over Armoush’s martial chords. And while we can’t ignore Carter and Loewen’s contributions, cellist Marina Hasselberg’s melancholy bowing and soulful bass lines help Armoush stop time on “Hala La La”, which veers from a melancholy folk melody to a wonderfully conversational exploration of abstract sound—and then back again.
For all that it is both technically impeccable and formally inventive, ElectriTradition is shaped primarily by Armoush’s emotional generosity, and by how his friends match that with their own. This music offers a beautiful antidote to the conflicts and anguish of today’s world—and more than a hint of how humans from wildly different backgrounds can find common cause.” – Alexander Varty
RAYHAN's sophomore album Distilled Extractions released December 06, 2024 on Afterday Audio.
“With Distilled Extractions, Emad Armoush’s quintet Rayhan has accomplished the nearly impossible: blend outer-limits exploration with the deep soul of Syrian tradition, while simultaneously making this meeting sound as natural as breathing.” — Alexander Varty.
Bringing together the ensemble Rayhan for Distilled Extractions becomes a stroke of genius when paired with Emad Armoush’s lineup of traditional Arabic songs and original compositions. The ensemble – all veteran Canadian improvisors – have both the skill and the chemistry to explore beyond the basic songs to bring an evolutionary vision to the album. The result is simply beautiful. — The WholeNote.
“Crucially, Armoush avoids the trap of allowing his music to be subsumed into the generic category of world music. Instead, he preserves the integrity of these traditions while reimagining them with a jazz sensibility.” — All About Jazz.
The Avant-garde Flamenco Trio album Lunar released February 6, 2026 on Redshift Records
"Lunar follows a flamenco tradition, but, as with the Armoush’s other projects, it strays far into improvisational territory, not just varying a theme or running charts and scales but diving head-first into expansive passages – backed by some wispy electric ambience and Loewen’s soft and itinerant drums – that lack a predetermined center. The melodies and vocal patterns draw the listener in. But it is these long moments, where the musicians fumble for direction through terrain alternately spacious and pastoral and raucously discordant, that hold the album together and distinguish it from the classical and folk traditionalists that have pioneered these forms before." -The Free Jazz Collective.
In an effort to explain the existential problems of the world, Emad Armoush deals with serious topics in a dignified way, such as exile, community, and how to live in a war-torn world. The combination of virtuosity and emotional depth that he managed to achieve with longtime Canadian collaborators improvisers, trumpeter and electronics-man JP Carter and drummer Kenton Loewen, creates a sound that is both earthly and otherworldly, but also represents a refuge. They put tenderness at the forefront, as the backbone of the moving and timeless statements drawn from the air of dreams, without losing their delicate beauty and authenticity, trying to explain the existential problems of the world through art.” - Improvise Radio Beograd https://www.rts.rs/lat/radio/radio-beograd-3/5932895/improvizorijum.html
Emad Armoush’s Reminiscing Onwards solo debut album to be released November 06, 2026 on Afterday Audio
Emad Armoush’s Reminiscing Onwards. is an experimental music album with sounds and textures drawing dominantly on tonal music, ranging from solo acoustic pieces to multi-layering an array of acoustic/percussion instruments, vocals, and colored w/ electronics.
Music and lyrics composed and performed by Emad Armoush (Socan) Instruments: guitar, oud, ney, vocals, piano, percussion, synthesizer. Produced, Recorded, Mixed and Mastered by Jesse Zubot at 5151 Studios and The Deep Bay Bunker (Vancouver Island, BC). Assistant Engineer: Josh Zubot
Press:
"Is there a more exposed art form than solo improvisation?
Painters get to overpaint. Writers get to revise. Filmmakers can spend months—and millions—in the editing suite. But improvising musicians and dancers seemingly pull their creations from nothing and lay them out for audiences to hear, view, and critique.
Of course, this spontaneity is an illusion. Behind every in-the-moment gesture is a lifetime of experience, a multiplicity of choices, an assemblage of techniques, and the slow, personal shaping of taste… but when all of those things are combined in an intimate space, whether that be the concert hall or the recording studio, the effect can be that of hearing music or seeing movement for the first time
We include dance here because dance and music are intertwined, and while Syrian-Canadian multi-instrumentalist Emad Armoush has, so far as we know, not donned pointe shoes for this solo recording, Reminiscing Onwards is in fact a kind of pas de deux—or, sometimes, a pas de trois, quatre, or more—between musician and instrument or instruments. Picking up and occasionally layering voice, nylon-string guitar, ney, percussion, piano, and what sounds suspiciously like a yard-sale synthesizer, Armoush has revealed a few of his passions, documented some of his many abilities, and revealed how he thinks about music—or at least how he was thinking about music in October of 2025, when Reminiscing Onwards was recorded.
We’re fairly sure that his thinking and his talents have evolved since then, and will continue to evolve. He’s that kind of musician.
He’s also the kind of musician who’s aware of how solo recordings normally go, and who’s intent on avoiding the obvious patterns. Classical recitals follow the formal structures of sonata, nocturne, and partita and concentrate on exploring how those architectures can be illuminated and expanded by interpretive subtlety and personalized microdynamics. Jazz recitals—think Art Tatum or Joe Pass, two masters of solo performance—lovingly interrogate familiar chord progressions and make them new. Singer-songwriter solos can be sonic diaries, sometimes painful ones: consider two of my favourites, Skip Spence’s Oar and Nick Drake’s Pink Moon, which drew luminous, enduring art out of harrowing descents into madness.
Reminiscing Onwards doesn’t follow any of these templates. Instead, Armoush seems to start each piece with a simple question: “What if?”
What if an atonal classical guitar, a shaman’s clicking reindeer-hoof rattle, and an impressionistic reed flute got together in a reverberant cave to ponder the mysteries of existence? Album opener “Inquisitive” asks just that, and sets the tone for the rest of the record: thoughtful, a little dark, and yet more probing than despairing.
What if the journey continued on horseback, through desert badlands? A steady electronic wind whines behind “Paradoxical”’s cantering frame drum and flamenco palmas as Armoush’s voice blends muezzin and cante jondo.
Skipping ahead, “Trancing” asks “What if we can design our own rituals, ask our own questions of the night sky?” The night sky offers no answers, but its limitless depth is solace enough. And after that, “Message to ‘I’” asks “What if past, present, and future are one?” with its timeless melody; hints of the medieval mix with a very modern, meditative freedom of expression.
Reminiscing Onwards continues with more questions, more unanticipated juxtapositionings, more exploratory sounds. Muted guitars morph into quite bamboo marimbas. A madman’s rant rises above the cheesiest of keyboards, suggesting the folly of unmodulated ardour. A “Spontaneous Taqsim” links the oud of Armoush’s native land to the guitar of his other spiritual home, Spain. Some titles offer more clues: “Contemplating”, “Nostalgia”, “Introspective”, and then the deliciously compelling “Whirling” delivers a one-man reduction of the beautiful frenzy that Armoush frequently offers as singer with the Arabic-improv big band Haram.
Intimate though it is, Reminiscing Onwards is also a big record. Searching for a summation, I’m reminded of the poet Walt Whitman’s famous self-description: "I am large, I contain multitudes.” Emad Armoush’s music can be fairly said to contain universes, some self-created, some assembled from fragments and residue, some built of longing and others of hope. And all of the largeness here—and the largesse, too, for this is generous music—is animated by heart.
We’re fairly sure that his thinking and his talents have evolved since then, and will continue to evolve. He’s that kind of musician.
He’s also the kind of musician who’s aware of how solo recordings normally go, and who’s intent on avoiding the obvious patterns. Classical recitals follow the formal structures of sonata, nocturne, and partita and concentrate on exploring how those architectures can be illuminated and expanded by interpretive subtlety and personalized microdynamics. Jazz recitals—think Art Tatum or Joe Pass, two masters of solo performance—lovingly interrogate familiar chord progressions and make them new. Singer-songwriter solos can be sonic diaries, sometimes painful ones: consider two of my favourites, Skip Spence’s Oar and Nick Drake’s Pink Moon, which drew luminous, enduring art out of harrowing descents into madness.
Reminiscing Onwards doesn’t follow any of these templates. Instead, Armoush seems to start each piece with a simple question: “What if?”
What if an atonal classical guitar, a shaman’s clicking reindeer-hoof rattle, and an impressionistic reed flute got together in a reverberant cave to ponder the mysteries of existence? Album opener “Inquisitive” asks just that, and sets the tone for the rest of the record: thoughtful, a little dark, and yet more probing than despairing.
What if the journey continued on horseback, through desert badlands? A steady electronic wind whines behind “Paradoxical”’s cantering frame drum and flamenco palmas as Armoush’s voice blends muezzin and cante jondo to describe [what are the lyrics about?].
Skipping ahead, “Trancing” asks “What if we can design our own rituals, ask our own questions of the night sky?” The night sky offers no answers, but its limitless depth is solace enough. And after that, “Message to ‘I’” asks “What if past, present, and future are one?” with its timeless melody; hints of the medieval mix with a very modern, meditative freedom of expression.
Reminiscing Onwards continues with more questions, more unanticipated juxtapositionings, more exploratory sounds. Muted guitars morph into quite bamboo marimbas. A madman’s rant rises above the cheesiest of keyboards, suggesting the folly of unmodulated ardour. A “Spontaneous Taqsim” links the oud of Armoush’s native land to the guitar of his other spiritual home, Spain. Some titles offer more clues: “Contemplating”, “Nostalgia”, “Introspective”, and then the deliciously compelling “Whirling” delivers a one-man reduction of the beautiful frenzy that Armoush frequently offers as singer with the Arabic-improv big band Haram.
Intimate though it is, Reminiscing Onwards is also a big record. Searching for a summation, I’m reminded of the poet Walt Whitman’s famous self-description: "I am large, I contain multitudes.” Emad Armoush’s music can be fairly said to contain universes, some self-created, some assembled from fragments and residue, some built of longing and others of hope. And all of the largeness here—and the largesse, too, for this is generous music—is animated by heart." Alexander Varty