Shibe brings a lively charisma and a vibrant array of musical colour to the album, conjuring everything from 17th-century lute to Arabic oud across this wide-reaching programme. Sulayman’s performance at times feels too restrained, but his interpretation of Britten’s Songs f rom the Chinese ha s a wonderful piquancy and dynamism, and brings this thoughtful release to a rewarding close.

It’s a thoughtful and idiosyncratic project, one carried through in several arrangements and realisations by the two musicians that blur the line between song and art song into something broadly ‘folkish’.

The main idea that Shibe and Sulayman play around with throughout this album is the contrast between exoticised, garbled or merely half-remembered Western portrayals of the Eastern Mediterranean and East Asia..The anonymous La prima vez has a simple plaintiveness, for which Sulayman’s unfussy voice – light, with rapid but unobtrusive vibrato – and Shibe’s gentle accompaniment are perfect.

an eclectic album, built on friendship, which explores the performers’ own sense of identity, memory, diaspora, often in their own arrangements...Sulayman, a Lebanese-American singer, light-voiced and flexible, brings intensity to traditional Sephardic song, and new inflections to John Dowland, Claudio Monteverdi and Benjamin Britten (his six songs from the Chinese).