On 18 October, the Aga Khan Master Musicians (AKMM), the resident performing ensemble of the Aga Khan Music Programme, awed a distinguished audience with a demonstration of how Muslim cultural heritage can serve as a rich and inspiring resource for cutting edge musical innovation. Performing in a sold-out concert organised by l’Institut du Monde Arabe, whose mission is to cultivate intercultural dialogue between Europe and the Arab world, the five members of AKMM showcased their own compositions, improvisations and arrangements, many of them featured on the group’s just-released debut recording, Nowruz, produced by the Aga Khan Music Programme in partnership with Smithsonian Folkways Recordings.
Founded by the Music Programme in 2013, AKMM draws on music from regions once linked by the trans-Eurasian trade routes popularly known as the Silk Road to create a strikingly original body of work where living musical traditions meet and meld.
AKMM artists who performed at l’Institut du Monde Arabe, which titled its concert “Music of the Silk Road and its Global Impact”, included Basel Rajoub (saxophone and duclar), Feras Charestan (qanun), Jasser Haj Youssef (viola d’amore), Basma Jabr (vocal) and Abbos Kosimov (percussion).