For an hour, all was right with the world

Saturday night, the Kronos Quartet appeared with Emil Zrihan, who is known as “The Moroccan Nightingale.” As far as I can tell, that has not changed the political situation in the Middle East. But now some 2,000 people who happened to be in the Walt Disney Concert Hall to hear the premiere of a new suite of arrangements for this rabbi of the main synagogue in Ashkelon, Israel, and the intrepid American string quartet must understand that dialogue between Jews and Arabs is not just possible but doable. The Israelis and their neighbors speak, in a very real and deep sense, the same language.

Zrihan is three tenors in one. Born in Morocco’s capital, Rabat, he grew up singing Jewish music and that of the Arab and Andalusian traditions. He makes little distinction among them. Even when he approaches a Klezmer favorite such as “Yiddishe Mame,” he might ascend to the end of a phrase with cantorial grace (and a touch of schmaltz) but then, astonishingly, just keep going. The voice sours into ecstatic roulades that make you think of Sufi singers. Other turns of phrase bring to mind flamenco.

From the point of view of virtuosic singing, Zrihan’s is a remarkable exhibition of breath control, vocal flexibility and his thrillingly smooth and confident scaling of the tenorial stratosphere. From a musical point of view, he is no less remarkable or inspiring in his finding a common point of departure for three seemingly distinct cultural traditions.

In fact, you might say that Zrihan, who also flashed something close to a Handelian countertenor a time or two Sunday, is four tenors in one. And there is even one more side to him. He dresses for the Catskills and is not above a cornball croon. At Disney he appeared with the hip Kronos and four Middle Eastern musicians exciting an urban world-music crowd. But if things ever get tough for him, Zrihan could always team up with a tired Borscht Belt combo and make retirees swoon.

The set of traditional numbers for Zrihan, Kronos and additional players on violin, flute, oud and percussion were arranged by Osvaldo Golijov and a young Russian-born New York composer who goes by one name, Ljova. The Los Angeles Philharmonic commissioned the arrangements but (through either cluelessness or carelessness) took no credit for them in the program. Most were traditional numbers, although the set opened with an original piece by Golijov, “Last Andalusian Sky,” which did what this Argentinian-born composer and one of the darlings of American new music does so well. Beginning with a warmly beautiful cello solo, the short piece dived into a lively multicultural dance, full of color and percussive personality. Ljova’s arrangements were fussier than Golijov’s and most effective when less was more, especially when Zrihan and individual Kronos players entered into ornate, soulful dialogue with the ever-embellishing tenor.

The program was part of the Philharmonic’s World Music series, and the Kronos obliged with an opening set of arrangements of numbers from Lebanon, Turkey, India, Iran, Mexico, Ethiopia and Iceland. In splendid form, the quartet made the world, for an hour, seem small, practically manageable and understandable.

David Harrington, Kronos’ founder and first violinist, has recently said that he makes it a practice to try to speak every day to one person with whom he disagrees politically. And here was a perfect example of open ears in inventive arrangements by Golijov and Stephen Prutsman. Whether it turned to the languid feeling of a number by the Mexican band Cafe Tacuba, captured the tearful intensity of an ornate Turkish viola solo or exuberantly joined in with the Icelandic rock group Sigur Ros (on tape), Kronos played as though it had just stepped off the plane.