Richard Carrick: L’Algérie released on New Focus Recordings
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L’Algérie (2024)
for Extended Piano, Violin, Cello, Oud, and Percussion

total duration: ~45 minutes

In nine movements:

I mémorial
II - Aïn Bessem
III - joie - sur les mélodies de Karim Ziad
IV - interlude 1
V - la reine
VI - les cloches
VII - gnawa loops
VIII - inconnue
IX- traverser

Released on New Focus Recordings on January 30, 2026. Available on all streaming services.

First version premiered by Either/OR (Jennifer Choi violin, John Popham cello, Bahar Badieitabar oud, Richard Carrick piano, Rafael Heredia Horimoto percussion) on February 20, 2024 at Berklee in Boston, MA.

NYC Premiere of final version by Either/Or: Bahar Badieitabar oud, Richard Carrick piano, Jennifer Choi violin, John Popham cello, Justin Jay Hines percussion on October 1, 2024 at Miller Theatre, Columbia University, New York, NY.

L’Algérie was written in December and January 2024 in Boston and Holland.

Some of these movements are stand alone pieces to be played in improvised lead sheets with drums. They were premiered on August 29, 2024 at The Stone as part of Jennifer Choi’s residency by Jennifer Choi, violin, Rubin Kodheli, cello, Bahar Badieitabar, oud, Richard Carrick, piano, and Rafael Heredia Horimoto drums.

If you are interested in how Richard is making these sounds in the piano, please check out Richard’s Extended Piano Techniques on YouTube.

CD Linear Notes by Shaun Brady

Composer and pianist Richard Carrick conjures an evocative travelogue for an imagined journey through Algeria on his compelling new album-length work, l’Algérie. The second part of a trilogy of large-scale works inspired in part by the music of the Maghreb region of North Africa, l’Algérie is the most introspective and autobiographical piece of the project, drawing on the composer’s own family heritage and deeply personal exploration of the area’s richly varied musical traditions.

L’Algérie is scored for extended piano, oud, violin, cello and percussion, and performed by the acclaimed experimental chamber ensemble Either/Or: Carrick on piano, Bahar Badieitabar on oud, Jennifer Choi on violin, Justin Jay Hines on percussion and John Popham on cello. The concert-length composition is atypical in the contemporary and avant-garde chamber music world, where shorter, self-contained pieces are the norm — evidencing, as does much of his genre-blurring music, the influence of jazz, world music, and other forms on Carrick’s wide-ranging worldview.

L’Algérie is a vivid and original amalgam of refracted elements from Carrick’s North African influences; textural and timbral experiments with the composer’s innovative array of preparations and extended techniques; the intricate architecture of North African polyrhythms in contemporary chamber music; and excursions into improvisational elements.

The nine-movement work traverses an impressionistic landscape shaped by historical research and personal reflection, familial recollections and musical evolutions, abstract geography and improvisatory interpretation — shaped by Carrick’s compositional vision and singular vocabulary for the piano.

“I've always had a passion for Algerian and North African music,” Carrick explains. “But there came a point when it seemed I would be unlikely to visit the country anytime soon. So I decided that to let the music guide me, to write a journal describing an imagined voyage to Algeria through music that I love from that region.”

Carrick’s fascination with the sounds and culture of the Maghreb was inherited from his mother, who was born in the town of Aïn-Bessem in northern Algeria. She left the country with her family after the Second World War to settle in France, where Carrick was born. He can still recall growing up with the cultural artifacts of the family’s past in North Africa: his grandparents conversing in Arabic and enjoying delectable meals of couscous.

Carrick’s fascination with the music of the Maghreb began to emerge in his compositions in 2009 after an inspirational visit to Morocco, when he wrote “Moroccan Flow (unfolding from unity)” as part of his Flow Cycle for Strings. The interest came to full fruition with 2023’s The Atlas, the first part of Carrick’s expansive, globally-minded trilogy — a trek into the titular mountain range composed for extended piano and string quartet. The third work, The Path, utilizes instrumentation similar to l’Algérie with Cuban tres in place of oud and drum set rather than percussion, allowing for a heavier, more groove-oriented approach inspired in part by ‘70s fusion and North African dance music.

Carrick set out to write l’Algérie with the danceable polyrhythms of Chaabi and the transcendent grooves of Gnawa music in mind, but as he wrote, he found that the suite began to draw more heavily on Arabic and Cantorial song. “Unexpectedly,” he says, “I ended up creating some of the most melodic music I've ever written through the inspiration of interesting meters and polyrhythms of Algerian music.”

The album opens with “memorial,” an embarkation point that sets out not only into unknown terrain but into a remembered past, evoked by haunting tones generated by the use of e-bows on piano strings. The impressionistic nature of the sojourn allows for travel in both time and place. The second movement sets down in the small desert town where Carrick’s mother was born, incorporating an echo of Cantorial melody in the pairing of oud and violin.

Explicit references to music and artists from Carrick’s research abound: the blind singer and oud player Reinette l’Oraniste, who introduced Arab-Andalus music to European audiences after relocating to Paris, in the fifth movement, “la reine;” the percussionist and composer Karim Ziad, a collaborator with popular raï singer-songwriters like Cheb Mami and Khaled, on the third movement, “joie,” which hints at his tune “The Joker;” while movement seven, “gnawa loops,” pays homage to “Kommi,” Ziad’s collaboration with pianist Omri Mor and guembri player Mehdi Nassouli.

“les cloches” reverberates with one of Carrick’s most inventive techniques inside the piano, creating a chiming, resonant tone with magnets, mutes, and a device he calls a “harmonizer” that interacts mesmerizingly with the oud and percussion. “interlude” and “inconnue” are both wholly improvised movements, though the line is blurred in Carrick’s work. “traverser” culminates the piece with a through-composed movement that builds in intensity and layered beauty.

Concert Program notes
L'Algérie (2024) is an introspective followup to The Atlas (2023), incorporating references to my maternal heritage, specifically through melody. 

My family left Algeria for Paris after WWII, but in many ways their Algerian lifestyle continued: my grandparents continued speaking in Arabic, continued preparing hearty couscous meals, even as their children assimilated to life in France. My mother, along with the cohort of Algerian-born French, is referred to as French pied noir - and my generation, children born in France of pied noir, are sometimes referred to pied gris.  Identities intersect, evolve, and engage these histories across generations.

I first took to the music of the Maghreb (a region defined by the Atlas Mountains!) in my 20’s through recordings, and have dug deeper into it at different stages of my life. My composition The Atlas has a movement  called Penumbra which references the  movie El Gusto, detailing a 1950’s Chaabi band consisting of Jews and Muslims that reunited 50 years later. Penumbra was the springboard for L'Algérie.

As is often the case, the piece the one plans to write is not the piece that ends up being written! I was initially drawn to the entrancing and elaborate polyrhythms of North African dance music. But as I wrote this piece, it was the Arabic and Cantorial styles of melody that most found their way into this score. 

While this is an entirely original composition, there are short melodic references incorporated into this score. Reinette l’Oraniste (1917-1998) was blind oud player and singer from Algeria who also relocated to Paris, and whose recordings are considered definitive versions of the Arab-Andalus style. One of her best known melodies is briefly quoted in mémorial and interlude 1. Karim Ziad (b. 1966) is a drummer and percussionist from Algeria who is an expert in North African grooves, with infectious Chaabi rhythms and upbeat sense of melody.  In joie there are references to his tune The Joker, and gnawa loops is an homage to Kommi, his collaboration with Mehdi Nassouli and Omri Mor. Aïn Bessem is the name of the town where my mother was born, and the movement with the same name briefly references an excerpt of a 1927 Turkish Cantorial recording for voice and oud. All full melodies throughout the piece are my own, including the extended melodies in les cloches, traverser, joie, and la reine (with a very brief one measure reference to Ravel).

This composition is not a nostalgic or romanticized reference to the past: rather, it is about the musical dialogue I have had with this place and history across several dates, always wondering where the future might be.

This piece is dedicated to my family from Algeria, and in memory of my uncle Alain Arphi, who always dreamed big.