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Arabic music concert Wednesday at Crane in Potsdam

Posted 2/15/16

POTSDAM -- SUNY Potsdam's Crane School of Music will host three guest artists traveling from New York City to lead a special Arabic music concert Wednesday, Feb. 17 at 8 p.m. in the Sara M. Snell …

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Arabic music concert Wednesday at Crane in Potsdam

Posted

POTSDAM -- SUNY Potsdam's Crane School of Music will host three guest artists traveling from New York City to lead a special Arabic music concert Wednesday, Feb. 17 at 8 p.m. in the Sara M. Snell Music Theater.

The guest artists include Zafer Tawil, John Murchison and Eylem Basaldi.

Crane student Raquel Klein '16 is organizing this concert. As a SUNY Potsdam Presidential Scholar, she is completing a project on integrating Arabic music into music education curricula.

The concert is free, and the public is invited to attend.

An accomplished Palestinian musician based in New York City, Zafer Tawil is a virtuoso on oud, violin and qanoun, and is a master of Arabic percussion. He has performed with numerous musicians, ranging from the pop star Sting to avante garde composer/performer Eliot Sharpe, to masters of Arabic music, such as Simon Shaheen, Chad Mami, Bassam Saba and George Ziadeh, among many others. Tawil has composed music for a number of film soundtracks, including most recently Jonathan Demme's "My Favorite American" (not yet released), "Rachel Getting Married" and the documentary "Until When."

John Murchison is a Brooklyn-based bassist. He has a hand in many of the various music scenes of New York City, moving fluidly from jazz and avante garde to musical theatre, to traditional musics from Africa and the Middle East. As a result, his playing style can draw from a wide variety of influences, such as jazz, Arabic maqam, Moroccan Gnawa music and post-tonal melodies. Murchison has performed in a variety of theatre productions, from downtown to Times Square, and has held the bass chair for the critically acclaimed "Natasha, Pierre & the Great Comet of 1812."

The Turkish-born violinist Eylem Basaldi was on the classical track at the New England Conservatory when she took a class in Turkish folk music and rediscovered the sounds of her youth. She began pursuing her love and passion for Mediterranean musical cultures, and now performs in a wide array of settings featuring Balkan, Middle Eastern, North African and South Asian musical traditions. Basaldi is a member and collaborator in several different groups, including Dolunay, which performs the songs of the people of Turkish descent who lived across Rumeli, the southern Balkan region of the Ottoman Empire. She is also a member of Sandaraa, a band that explores a vast repertoire of South Asian material (from Balochistan, Afghanistan and beyond), while blending it with the sounds of Eastern Europe and more. Basaldi regularly plays and records with various musicians and bands, including the Grammy Award-winning Snarky Puppy, with the classical Turkish singer Ahmet Erdogdular and the Greek jazz bassist Petros Klampanis.

For more information about SUNY Potsdam's Crane School of Music, visit www.potsdam.edu/crane.