David Dalle
Thursday April 11th, 2019 with David Dalle
Clarinetist Kinan Azmeh and his new album "Uneven Sky" with his own works and other Syrian composers. Music from Sudan.

A look today at the the new album from Kinan Azmeh, who writes he would "like to be described as a Syrian-born, New York-based, genre-bending clarinetist and composer". Azmeh has music degrees from the Damascus High Institute of Music and Juillard in New York. His international life as an extremely successful Syrian expatriate musician became one of a Syrian exile after Syria was plunged into civil war. His music can be both global in scope with his membership in Yo Yo Ma's Silk Road Ensemble and his many collaborations with musicians from all over the world, and can be intensely focused on the agonies and sorrows of his home and also his longing for home. The Syrian civil war has changed his perspective "The art I do doesn't stop a bullet, doesn't bring a free democratic secular Syria, it doesn't bring back people who died... (but) it gives us a reason to live." His new album is a 2-cd set with one dedicated to his own music and the other dedicated to pieces from 3 other Syrian composers. Today, we will hear two of his own works: "Suite for Improvisor and Orchestra" and "Ibn Arabi Suite". The were composed in 2008 and 2013 respectively and feature a melding of Arabic gestures and melodies and Western classical music. The Suite for Improvisor and Orchestra features three movements evoking specific times and places in Azmeh's life. The Ibn Arabi Suite also in 3 movements, features the Syrian vocalist Dina Orsho and is inspired by the 13th century Andalusian mystic and philospher Ibn Arabi.