The Tufts University Department of Music presents Tufts Tahkt, the Arabic Music Ensemble, in Arabic Music of the Near East in the Distler Performance Hall at the Perry and Marty Granoff Music Center on Saturday, March 3, 2012at 1 p.m. as part of the Tufts Saturday Family and Children’s Concert Series.
Under the direction of Kareem Roustom, the concert will feature performances on instruments such as the darbuka, the oud, and the qanun played by Tufts undergraduate and graduate students, as well as special guest artists.
The Granoff Music Center is located at 20 Talbot Avenue on Tufts’ Medford/Somerville campus. Admission is free and open to the public. For more information, please visit as.tufts.edu/music/musiccenter or call the Granoff Music Center Box Office at 617.627.3679.
SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 11
@ 7:00 PM
Tufts University, Distler Hall
<http://as.tufts.edu/music/musiccenter/visit/directions.htm>
Nearer to East: Contemporary Chamber Music from the Arab World & Beyond
Featuring music by Karim Al-Zand, Kinan Azmeh, Bushra El-Turk, Mohammed
Fairouz, Zaid Jabri & Kareem Roustom
A Concert by LUNATICS AT LARGE
Lunatics at Large, the renowned New York City-based new music ensemble,
will bring this exciting and unique program to Tufts University on their
first visit to the area. Hailed by the New York Times as “…young,
energetic, and finely polished,” Lunatics at Large will explore music by
composers who live and work in the U.S.A. and Europe but have strong ties
to the Arab world. Avoiding exotic and orientalist cliches, this
thoughtful program brings together a collection of passionate, eloquent,
and bold works by a group of composers whose music both reflects the past
and speaks in the idioms of the present.
Distler Performance Hall. Tickets are free with a Tufts ID card (limit two
per ID) and $10 for general admission. Call 617.627.3679 for tickets. This
concert has been made possible by the Granoff Music Fund.
Join us at the Center for Arabic Culture on Friday, February 3rd at 6pm for an engaging evening with Mark Kabban, a young Arab-American leader who is serving refugee youth through his educational non-profit organization, YALLA. CAC is honored to kick off our Inspiration Series with Mark Kabban.
The Inspiration Series aims to celebrate role-models such as Kabban by highlighting their amazing work. We also hope that the impact of this series will inspire individuals and cultivate cohesiveness among the broader community.
About Mark:
Mark Kabban, founder of Youth and Leaders Living Actively (YALLA) and 2011 VH1’s “Do Something Awards” finalist. Inspired by the Iraqi refugees he met through his work as a refugee case manager, he started an organization called YALLA, which uses soccer and art to empower immigrant families and their children and help build community. In 2010, YALLA provided 150 refugee children, many of whom suffer from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), with 10-15 hours of weekly programs and served as their primary after-school care.
The scholar-athletes are expected to uphold high performance in academic tutoring as well as participation in soccer and community service. The next challenge for Kabban is the expansion of YALLA to keep up with the rapidly increasing numbers of Iraqi refugees. He also aspires to combat drop out rates and ethnic violence in the area where YALLA works by creating a peace building charter school intended to send 100% of students to college.
We look forward to being inspired by Mark’s success, creativity and community commitment!
This course will strenghten and further develop participants Arabic calligraphy technique and broaden their exposure of other scripts. Students will be provided with persistent hands-on practice including in-class practice, individual/group instruction, and take-home assignments as well. This course will combine lectures with visual materials, discussion of reading and/or visual evidence, and hands-on practice with bamboo and ink.
Time: 3:15 PM-4:30 PM, Sundays, 1/22-2/26 Tuition: $120
Material Cost: $10 (expected cost to be incurred by students for materials)
Instructor: Wafaa Alshimrty Prerequisites: Prior knowledge of the Arabic alphabet is requested.
Location: Center for Arabic Culture located at the Armory, 191 Highland Avenue, 6B, Somerville, MA
Lebanese Master Marcel Khalifé will perform the prophetic poems of the Arab World’s most renowned and beloved poet, Mahmoud Darwish, in tribute to the Arab Spring.
The poetry of Mahmoud Darwish (www.mahmouddarwish.com), the melodies of Marcel Khalife (www.marcelkhalife.com), resonating across the Arab world from the Middle East to North Africa, resounding above the din of conflict and poverty, singing instead of the shade of grapevines, the bright eyes of loved ones, the heartache of divisions and decline that could be healed, love that could be returned.
Marcel Khalifé, Lebanese master of the oud (Arabic lute), evokes this world, honoring the spirit of his late friend and associate Mahmoud Darwish a strikingly original Palestinian poet born in Palestine whose poetry has been translated to more than 25 languages worldwide and extensively published in the US. Khalifé’s new concert program, In the Presence of Absence: An Homage to Mahmoud Darwish, revisits and re-imagines the ties that bound these two powerful advocates of Arab culture, one that weaves the rich complexities of its great history, the diversity of its cultures with the humanity and longing of today and deeply expressed by the dawn of the current monumental Arab spring sweeping the Arab world.
Mohamed Abla, Ahmed Basiony, Hala Elkoussy, Shady El Noshokaty, Sabah Naim, Moataz Nasr
Opening during the one year anniversary of the first mass protests in Tahrir Square, “Histories of Now: Six Artists from Cairo” brings together work by some of the most inspiring and influential video and new media artists working in Egypt today, including a multi-channel video installation by the late Ahmed Basiony featured in the Egyptian Pavilion of the 54th Venice Biennale.
This exhibition is an intimate investigation of the complex social framework and collective formal engagements currently being explored by Egyptian artists. With many of these artists exhibiting in the northeast region of the United States for the first time, “Histories of Now” introduces viewers to the diversity of voices, concerns and approaches—both material and conceptual—found in today’s Cairo; six artists presenting six contrasting visions, united only by context, creative discipline and geographic proximity.
January 23, 6–8 pm
School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Opening Reception (Free)
January 25, 6:30 pm
Remis Auditorium, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Deborah and Martin Hale Visiting Artist Lecture: Contemporary Art and the New Egyptian Identity, a multimedia lecture and performance with Shady El Noshokaty. ($15, MFA members, students, seniors; $18, non-members)
Karim Nagi presents ARABIZED February 10th, 2012
@ 8pm at the YMCA Cambridge Theater
820 Massachusetts Ave
Cambridge, MA 02139
Tickets are NOW on sale, click HERE.
$20 Adults
$10 Students
Arabized is a mash of civilizations, featuring Arab music, folk dance, and oration. Karim Nagi re-imagines the Arab tradition, performing acrobatic sufi drumming, Saidi cane dances, and soulful buzuq taqasim, all within a greater story. But this is not a simple cultural showcase. Karim, through futuristic remixing, animated oration, and the mashing of Arab and famous Western songs, a unique theatrical experience is made. He will perform his original works including the melodic “Flying Heavy for Egypt”, the percussive opus “Ya Haggar”, his dance choreography of “Al-Harb Ma’ Al-Rouah” and his finger cymbal a cappella “Cymbalisms”. Nagi will also perform songs from his newest CD “ARABIZED” which includes Arabic versions of famous songs by Mozart, Rossini, and Latino and Asian traditions.
Drummer, Composer, Folk Dancer and Orator Karim Nagi makes his return to Boston after 5 years of world touring. This native Egyptian produced nearly 100 events in Boston from 1995 to 2006, including half a decade of Arabesque Mondays at Club Passim, The 2006 Fundraiser for the Lebanon Red Cross, and the Arab Dance Seminar. In the past 5 years Karim’s own performance career has accelerated, and he has since performed in great prestigious venues all over the world, including The Smithsonian in Washington DC, Al-Sawy Theater in Cairo, Theatre de la Ville in Paris, and Tainan University in Taiwan, to same a fractional few. He has released 5 instructional DVDs in Arab music and dance, and 10 music CDs, including his latest “Arabized” which will be released for this February 10th concert.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TpKsnL7iMIk]
The year 2011 has been an incredible year of firsts for CAC – our first year in our new home, first open house, first summer camp, first adult education classes, and just recently a grand and extravagantly successful fashion show. The list goes on. And with those firsts comes significant growth and increased interest from both within our community, and among the greater public at large. Not only have we seen a 53% increase in our mailing list and growing attendance at our events, but we also have been covered by mainstream publications such as the Boston Globe and Boston Magazine. (Click here for 2011 highlights or here for a full video!)
For 2012, we plan to continue our services to encompass additional age groups and interests with more music, art, educational programs, and other cultural events that will cater to our growing public audience and to you! Our Sunday Arabic school is one of the best Arabic teaching programs around, and we plan to maintain our high standards. We invite you to help us spread the word about CAC, and share in this exciting time in building an Arabic cultural center that will endure for generations. (Click here for 2012 preview.)
The growth of CAC is allowing us to bring events valued by our community, and raise awareness about Arabic Culture, which means, we’ll need to spend additional hours, get additional help/resources, and of course we’ll need the support of our community. Support from friends like you goes a long way to help us sustain the high caliber of service and rich events that we offer; without your help CAC cannot succeed!
This year, to continue with our planned programming and serve the community, we have a goal of raising $40,000. This money will provide the necessary funding for critical CAC operations to allow us to deliver our valuable portfolio of programs. Your support of CAC is critical to our success and will have a profound impact on students, children, families, our community and greater Massachusetts. If you have given last year, we truly appreciate your generosity, and as you can see, your money was put to great use. Please consider donating a little more this year to help us reach our goal. If you have not donated before, please consider investing in a community center that represents you, serves your family and has become a source of pride.
Thank you in advance for your generosity and contributions. If you have any suggestions or comments, please feel free to e-mail us anytime at info at cacboston.org; we look forward to hearing from you!
With best wishes,
Noreen Hafez Ayan, President, CAC Board of Director
