Participants

CONTEMPORARY MUSIC FROM THE ENDS OF THE SILK ROUTE 

Feras Charestan is a brilliant qanun virtuoso, who comes from the city of Al-Hasakeh, in the northeast of Syria, and studied qanun at the High Institute of Music in Damascus. He performs regularly as a qanun soloist with the Qatar Philharmonic Orchestra and the Syrian National Symphony Orchestra as well as in the bands Roubai Toueis and Woujouh Kenan. He currently lives in Stockholm, Sweden.

http://www.akdn.org/akmi/artists/feras-charestan

Andrea Piccioni was born in Rome, Italy, and is considered to be one of the greatest exponents of the art of frame drumming. He has developed an extraordinary capacity to move through various musical genres and styles, a true virtuoso He has re-elaborated the language of the Tamburello and various frame drums in a truly personal, virtuosic and expressive manner. Founder of the FRAME DRUMS ITALIA association, Piccioni tours widely with numerous projects and is an experienced teacher as well as the artistic director of FRAME DRUMS ITALIA International Festival.

http://www.akdn.org/akmi/artists/andrea-piccioni

SPECIAL GUESTS: PERSPECTIVES

Bruce Arnold: An author, composer, educator and guitarist residing in New York City, Bruce Arnold has numerous CDs and DVDs to his credit, ranging from standard jazz repertoire to free improvisation to reinterpretations of classical music with the ensemble Spooky Actions. He has also written more than 60 music instruction books covering Guitar Pedagogy, Ear Training and Time Studies. Bruce currently teaches at Princeton University and has taught at New England Conservatory of Music, Dartmouth College, Berklee College of Music, New School University, and City College of New York and New York University.

http://www.brucearnold.com/

Feliu Gasull: Feliu Gasull, a composer and guitarist enamored with the music and the sea, was born in Barcelona. His first music education was autodidactic. After guitar studies at the Conservatoire de musique de Genève he later studied composition at the Indiana University (USA). He has created music for various instrumental as well as choral ensembles, symphonic pieces, chamber music, theatrical works, dance and film. He is also active as a soloist performing his own works. Presently, he combines performance and composition in his teaching at the l’Escola Superior de Música de Catalunya.

http://www.feliugasull.com/

David Rosenboom: David Rosenboom is a composer-performer, inter-disciplinary artist, author and educator, who over five decades has explored the spontaneous evolution of musical forms, multidisciplinary composition and performance, unique languages for improvisation, cross-cultural collaborations, performance art and literature, interactive multi-media and new instrument technologies, art-science research and philosophy, and extended musical interface with the human nervous system. His wide-ranging work is broadly distributed and presented around the world. He holds the Richard Seaver Distinguished Chair in Music at California Institute of the Arts where he has been Dean of The Herb Alpert School of Music since 1990. Rosenboom is a Yamaha Artist.

http://www.davidrosenboom.com/

PERFORMER-COMPOSERS AT THE HEM

Golfam Khayam: Golfam Khayam has evolved an international career as a performer-composer-improviser accomplished through integration of her native Persian musical background within contemporary music framework. Khayam has appeared extensively as a performer-composer in prestigious music festivals (Copenhagen Guitar Festival, Basel Culturescapes Festival, Aalborg International Guitar Festival, et al.) and she has been guest lecturer at the University of Art in Tehran and a research assistant at the Haute Ecole de musique de Genève.  Golfam’s Khayam’s newest duo recording with clarinetist Mona Matbou Riahi “Narrante” was released on ECM Records in spring of 2016.

http://www.golfamkhayam.com/