MAZEN EL BAGIR & ENSEMBLE

This season, the festival is taking a new direction. “We want to showcase African cultures in their Arab dimension,” explains curator Naseer Shamma. “This expansion has to do not only with geographical realities, but with shared memory, with rhythms that arise from the earth itself, and with voices that have remained alive in the human spirit across the ages.”

Shamma—who is not performing himself this year but will instead be appearing in a solo recital in March—has invited five ensembles featuring musicians from various African countries whose musical identities are shaped by centuries-old traditions.

“This music has been passed down from one generation to the next,” he says, “not merely as a legacy, but as a living, breathing organism that transforms and evolves, repeatedly reaffirming that what springs from the human soul never perishes.”

In the second concert, Sudanese composer and oud player Mazen Al Baqer and his quartet perform their own works, which blend African traditions with contemporary improvisational freedom.