• Arts
• BRANDEIS HOME

Music Unites Us

Thursday, February 28
Pre-concert talk with Professor Theodore Levin, 7:00 p.m.
Concert, 8:00 p.m.

World Music Series: REMIX
New Sounds from the Arab lands 

Kinan Azmeh, clarinet
Jasser Haj Youssef, violin, viola d'amore
Basel Rajoub, saxophone
and guest artists

Theodore Levin, Senior Project Consultant for the Aga Khan Music Initiative and curator of the “New Sounds” residency, described the group’s music as “a sublime mix of spontaneity and control rooted in a thousand-year-old tradition of improvisation.” Levin added, “This music is as alive and in the moment as you’ll ever hear, but it’s also fraught with history. Moreover, it could only have been created by artists whose own musical journeys have zigzagged back and forth between the Middle East and the West in unique and remarkable ways.” 

This adventurous program brings together eminent performer-composer-improvisers from Syria and Tunisia who boundary-crossing create new music inspired by the rich cultural heritage of the Arab lands. Often performing on instruments that are not native to the Middle East, these accomplished artists exemplify the talent, achievement, and breadth of a rising generation of cosmopolitan Arab musicians (who combine jazz, classical music, and the microtonal subtleties and myriad melodic modes of Arabic music). 

Kinan Azmeh was born in Damascus and graduated from the Damascus High Institute of Music and from Juilliard Conservatory. Kinan has appeared worldwide as a classical clarinettist and improviser. His compositions include works for orchestra, chamber music, and solo clarinet as well as film scores, dance soundtracks, and electro-acoustic music. 

Basel Rajoub is a saxophone player who comes from Aleppo, Syria. Basel studied European classical music and Middle Eastern music and jazz at Damascus Conservatory. As a composer, his focus has been merging jazz with Middle Eastern rhythms, piano, and brass and developing oriental music for the saxophone. Basel is much in demand as a studio musician and arranger, and has recorded three albums on his own. 

Jasser Haj Youssef is a Tunisian string player and composer who blends the worlds of Arab classical music, European classical music, and jazz. Performing both on violin and on the Baroque viola d’amore, whose resonant sympathetic strings are ideally suited to the modal melodic forms of Arabic music, Jasser is a consummate fusionist whose music is at once seamless and surprising. 

This residency is supported in partnership with the Aga Khan Trust for Culture