New Sounds

Marcel Khalife

Near East New Music

Show #2618

Thursday, December 14, 2006

For this edition of New Sounds, sample some music from the Near East. We’ll hear music from composer and master of the oud, Marcel Khalife. His latest, “Taqasim,” a three-part work, is an instrumental tribute to the the Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish. Khalife, with these wordless improvisations, takes the lower register of the oud and Peter Herbert's upright bass and brings Darwish's world of the Palestinian people's dispossession and exile to all, reaching for a place where devilish subtleties lie, and where speech is limited. Also on the program, there’s music from Abed Azrie, an Iranian native now residing in Paris who sets to music Arabian poems with strong mystical leanings. Plus, there’s unaccompanied solo flute music (Turkish ney, North Indian bansuri) by Huzur Nawaz, who has played for and directed music for the Mevlevi dervishes. And lots more.

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