Sometimes when musician Hesham Hamra plucks the strings of his oud, he is flooded with images of his homeland, Syria. “Every now and then I close my eyes and go from our house in Damascus to a friend’s flat in my head,” he says. “Then I smell the scent of jasmine on the streets.” “Jasmine” is also the name of a virtuoso piece he composed for the Ensemble Colourage from Ludwigshafen, a German city located roughly between the French border and Frankfurt. Colourage is a poetic play on words made up of colour, courage and collage. The group chose it as they sought to bring together music from the …