Live from New York, on Your Computer, a Musical Convergence from Iran and Syria
Here's a late-breaking reminder: Asia Society New York's concert featuring Sound: The Encounter on Saturday, December 7, is sold-out, but you can still tune in to AsiaSociety.org/Live for a free live webcast at 8:00 pm New York time on Saturday evening.
For those who might be tuning in from farther afield, meanwhile, here's a sampling of international live webcast times:
5:00 pm San Francisco/Los Angeles
2:00 am Paris (Sunday, December 8)
4:00 am Zanzibar (Sunday, December 8)
6:00 am Karachi (Sunday, December 8)
8:00 am Jakarta (Sunday, December 8)
10:00 am Tokyo (Sunday, December 8)
Sound: The Encounter is comprised of three musicians from Iran and Syria — multi-talented multi-instrumentalists Saeid Shanbehzadeh, Basel Rajoub and Naghib Shanbehzadeh — who will be joined on this occasion by oud player Kenan Adnawi. Based in traditional forms and styles of Central Asian folk music, Sound: The Encounter updates those traditions with bouts of improvisation and influences from Western jazz. As Saeid Shanbehzadeh recently told Asia Society Texas Center, "Here we are, three artists — with three different mindsets. We have to try to understand what we can do together with our musical knowledge. We don’t have to restrict ourselves to playing Iranian or Syrian music." (Sound: The Encounter will also be performing at Asia Society Texas Center on Saturday, December 14.)
The band was featured this past Tuesday on WNYC's New Sounds, with host John Schaefer. Before Saturday night's webcast, you can listen to that episode here:
WNYC's Soundcheck also provided a free download of Sound: The Encounter's track "Mina" earlier today:
Sound: The Encounter's Asia Society concert is presented in collaboration with the Aga Khan Music Initiative, a program of the Aga Khan Trust for Culture. The performance is part of Asia Society's ongoing initiative Creative Voices of Muslim Asia, made possible by support from the Doris Duke Foundation for Islamic Art, and is also presented in conjunction with the exhibition Iran Modern, on view at Asia Society Museum through January 5, 2014. Additional support for Iran Modern programming is provided by the Robert Sterling Clark Foundation, WLS Spencer Foundation and the American Institute of Iranian Studies.