Xauen Music & the DeKoven Center are proud to present a recital of Armenian & Middle-Eastern Music featuring Armenian musician Alan Shavarsh Bardezbanian on ‘ud, clarinet, and duduk with Hicham Chami on qanun, Naser Musa on ‘ud, and Karim Nagi on hand drums.

The recital will be presented on Sunday, July 31st at 7:30 PM at the Great Hall of the DeKoven Center in Racine, Wisconsin.

Tickets are for sale at www.xauen-music.com, $20 for adults and $10 for students. Proceeds will benefit the participants of the Heartland Youth Seminar on Arabic Music.

Alan Shavarsh Bardezbanian was born into an Armenian family in Massachusetts. Bardezbanian took up the ’ud as a child, and by his teens had mastered the Armenian dance hall repertoire. He studied with the great Turkish qanun master Esber Koprucu, to whom he was apprenticed from 1977 until Koprucu’s death, mastering the complex system of maqam, Turkish classical music.

A prolific composer, Bardezbanian performs regularly with the Middle Eastern Ensemble, a sextet based in Portland, Maine that he has directed for several years. The ensemble has released a CD, From Kef to Classical.

Hicham Chami is a Moroccan-born qanun performer based in Chicago. He has studied qanun for nearly twenty years. Chami graduated from the National Conservatory of Music and Dance in Rabat, Morocco, with a diploma in qanun performance and another in Western music theory. Chami has been performing with several ensembles in the U.S. and can be heard on several CDs, ranging from spiritual music and traditional Egyptian repertoire to Turkish folk music. He is founder of the Chicago Classical Oriental Ensemble as well as Xauen Music, an organization dedicated to preserving the heritage of classical Arabic, Turkish, Armenian, and Sephardic music.

Karim Nagi is a native Egyptian who has lived in the Boston area for over 20 years. Nagi performs primarily Arabic, Turkish, and Andalusian hand percussion, including the Egyptian tabla (goblet drum), riqq (tambourine) and segat (brass castanets). Nagi leads the Sharq Arabic Music Ensemble. He developed and currently performs Turbo Tabla, a music and dance show that combines traditional Arabic and Turkish music with modern electronica and techno. In 1998, Nagi began producing the Arabesque Mondays series at Club Passim. He currently teaches at the New England Conservatory of Music.

A Jordanian of Palestinian descent, singer/songwriter Naser Musa started playing ‘ud, a Middle Eastern lute, at an early age while living in Amman, Jordan. In addition to the ‘ud, he also studied singing Arabic music. He moved to the United States in 1982 and earned a degree in music from California Polytechnic University, Pomona. Musa performs regularly at concerts and festivals around the world. An ‘ud virtuoso and a valued studio musician, Musa has composed, arranged, and recorded several projects in the Middle East and in the United States.

[Photo: Shavarsh Bardezbanian]