The Touré-Raichel Collective

Vieux Farka Touré (Mali) and Idan Raichel (Israel), virtuosic superstars from very different backgrounds, join together to create masterworks of collaboration and improvisation. After a chance meeting in an airport in Europe, Idan and Vieux forged a deep friendship that led to an impromptu get together at a small studio in Tel Aviv in November 2010. The resulting recording session - acoustic, spontaneous, entirely improvised, and stunningly beautiful - could only be described as magic, and The Touré-Raichel Collective was born. On their album The Tel Aviv Session, Idan and Vieux captured an inspired musical moment that will bring to mind classic albums such as "Talking Timbuktu" by Ali Farka Touré with Ry Cooder, Keith Jarret’s "The Köln Concert" or Vincent Segal and Ballake Sissoko’s acclaimed "Chamber Music."

Their follow-up album, The Paris Session, is the result of the same freeform approach that was used in the first album, this time around they decided to feature more songs with vocals, a wider range of instrumentation, and appearances by musician friends such as Senegalese artist Daby Touré on bass, Israeli trumpeter Niv Toar, Malian singer Seckouba Diabate and others. Touré and Raichel have honed their interplay over the course of multiple tours together, but the album possesses the same spontaneous, heartfelt magic as its predecessor.