Nikki Yeoh, Café Oran

Nikki Yeoh celebrates the music of French Algerian, Jewish Composer Maurice El Medioni interpreter of Andalusian, Rai, Sephardic and Arabic music with a new Trio “Cafè Oran”

The concert will be focused on the music of Maurice El Medioni especially arranged for the trio additional compositions by Nikki Yeoh as contrasting works.

Médioni was born in1928, taught himself the piano at an early age and frequented Oran‘s American bars in the 1940s. His big loves were boogie-woogie and Cuban music, and his style is born of the fusing of these distinct influences with Arabic music. The piano is, of course, a European instrument, but in Médioni‘s the melodies take on a middle eastern character, subtly decorated and turning round on themselves in modal arabesques.

“By the evening’s final cavort, this intriguing project had captured Médioni’s music with a joyful and contemporary spirit.” – Mike Hobart Financial Times 9th August 2019

“A piano trio but not as you know it Jim – cello, plucked and bowed, rather than bass, a sprawl of percussion rather than conventional kit and fittingly given the unusual small group format there was a lot of beyond the blue horizon thinking too from pianist Nikki Yeoh.” – Stephen Graham Marlbank 27th July 2023