The Spirit of Fès Paths to Hope Brings a Night of World Music to the Kimmel Center's Perelman Theater
September 15, 2006
Globally, the fractiousness, warfare, and ever-intensifying political rhetoric of our era often makes it seem as if there are unbridgeable chasms between cultures. However, the extraordinary The Spirit of Fès Paths to Hope, which comes to the Kimmel Center on Tuesday, October 10, 2006 at 8pm in Perelman Theater, brings together celebrated artists from Muslim, Jewish, Christian, and Hindu backgrounds to perform together in a spirit of mutual respect and collaboration, and offers a glimmer of hope during a tumultuous time.
An Artist Chat will take place in the Kimmel Center’s Rendell Room at 6:30pm and will include Fes artists Zafer Tawil, Gerard Edery, Susan Hellauer, Aruna Sairam and director Zeyba Rahman, followed by a traditional offering of food of dates, juices, mint tea and water in the Kimmel Center Plaza to break the Ramadan fast.
Tickets for Fès Festival of World Sacred Music: Paths To Hope are $46 and $36 and can be purchased by calling 215-893-1999, online at www.kimmelcenter.org, or at the Kimmel Center box office, open daily from 10am to 6pm and later on performance evenings. (Additional fees may apply). For group sales call 215-893-5883.
A limited number of $10 tickets are available for every Kimmel Center Presents performance at the Kimmel Center. Tickets go on sale the day of the event and can be purchased at the Kimmel Center box office beginning 2.5 hours prior to curtain time and 11:30 am for matinees. Limit one ticket per person.
The Spirit of Fès Paths to Hope is the second World Pop mix concert. The Indigo Girls are also performing on October 10th in the Kimmel Center’s Verizon Hall.
The Spirit of Fès Paths to Hope
The Spirit of Fès tour has its roots in Morocco’s world-acclaimed annual Fès Festival of World Sacred Music and its companion event, the Fès Forum. Held each summer in Morocco’s former imperial city of Fès (previously spelled as "Fez" in English), these twin events bring together artists, audiences, intellectuals, political figures, social activists, and spiritual leaders from across the globe. Founded twelve years ago in the wake of the first Gulf War, the Fès Festival’s mission is to create a venue for dynamic and respectful intercultural and inter-religious dialogue between the world’s diverse cultures.
In 1994, Morocco began its celebration of the human spirit with the Fès Festival of World Sacred Music. Now, twelve years later, it has become a movement using the compelling combination of music, dance and ongoing discourse to communicate hope and a sense of shared brotherhood to melt boundaries. Organized by the U.S.-based non-profit The Spirit of Fes with leading firm Columbia Artists Management, Inc., Fès Festival of World Sacred Music has attracted some of the world's most celebrated performers and cultural ambassadors, including Indian sitarist Ravi Shankar, Senegalese vocalist Youssou N’Dour, Brazilian singer and guitarist (and Brazil's current Minister of Culture) Gilberto Gil, and South African vocalist Miriam Makeba, among many others, as well as a host of soloists and ensembles from Fes itself and from around Morocco.
The festival and forum have earned praise from organizations and individuals across the globe. In 2001, the United Nations honored the Fès Festival as one of just seven "Unsung Heroes of Dialogue," citing the festival as reaching "across the divide to the Other." In 2006, the Geneva-based Ousseimi Foundation awarded the festival the Ousseimi Prize For Tolerance (the 2005 winner was Nelson Mandela).
"When it comes to music festivals, globalism is too often wielded like a truncheon, clobbering listeners with second-rate practicioners of international traditions. In stark contrast, the annual Fès Festival of World Sacred Music in Morocco takes exquisite care in its programming, attracting some of the world’s finest practicioners of disparate musical disciplines and presenting them in glorious surroundings….." –DownBeat
The Musicians of The Spirit of Fès Paths to Hope
The lineup of master musicians participating in the Spirit of Fès represents some of the world’s most sophisticated artistic traditions.
Vocalist Susan Hellauer, a New York native, is one of the founding members of the extraordinarily popular early music ensemble Anonymous 4, whose recordings have sold well over than one million copies worldwide and whom Billboard magazine recently praised, saying: "For sheer radiance…no else comes close." The group's newest recording, Gloryland (Harmonia Mundi), a critically lauded album of American traditional music, was just released. Hellauer also teaches at Queens College of the City University of New York.
South Indian classical singer Aruna Sairam was born in Mumbai (Bombay), India, to a musical family; her mother was a noted vocalist herself, and her father a connoisseur who hosted some of their country’s greatest musicians and dancers. With her rich and flexible voice, Sairam is one of the most celebrated practitioners of the intricate Carnatic (South Indian classical) style, which is rooted in the devotional traditions of South India’s Hindu temples. Mumbai'sIndian Express newspaper praised a Sairam performance in which "deep rounded notes were held for unbelievable lengths, which finally swerved and moved in soft nuances of sound."
The Daqqa Roudania of Taroudant hails from southern Morocco. They are a group of craftsmen and tanners who are also initiates in a Sufi (mystical Muslim) community, or tariqa. Their rituals bring together a swirl of music, chant, dance, and percussion in order to attain an ecstatic state of oneness with God. The Daqqa’s ceremonies—which are at once religious ritual, concert, and social occasion—utilize such instruments as bender (frame) and Tarija (clay) tambourines, the unique Moroccan metal castanets called qarqaba, and the wind instrument called a neffar.
Born in Casablanca to a Jewish family, Gerard Edery is regarded as one of today's leading interpreters of Sephardic vocal music. Trained as a Western classical baritone, he has performed more than thirty roles with opera companies around the United States. With his group the Sons of Sepharad, Edery also works with such famed Jewish cantors as Alberto Mizrahi and Aaron Bensoussan, and is a frequent guest cantor at synagogues and Jewish community centers throughout North America.
Lebanese-American percussionist Jamey Haddad is one of the most notable world music and jazz percussionists in the United States. An associate professor at Boston's Berklee School of Music, Haddad has collaborated with some of the country's most famed musicians, including Paul Simon, Art Garfunkel, Carly Simon, Joe Lovano, the Paul Winter Consort, and Betty Buckley.
Zafer Tawil is a Palestinian-American multi-instrumentalist based in New York City. Playing the violin, oud (lute), percussion, and qanoun (hammered dulcimer), he has performed with some of the Arab world’s most celebrated artists, including violinist and oud master Simon Shaheen andrai singer Cheb Mami, as well as with Western superstars like Sting.
Kimmel Center Presents also offers more than fifty Free at the Kimmel, community performances during the 2006/07 5th Anniversary season. These include Free in the Plaza performances with local artists performing classical, jazz, pop, country, world, dance and family fun on the Commonwealth Plaza stage, as well as Artist Chats with Kimmel Center Presents performers, education events and Organ Postludes in Verizon Hall. On Saturday, October 14 at 11am kids between the ages of one to four can dance and stretch with Koresh Dance: Mommy & Me; On Saturday, October 14 at 1pm Kimmel Center celebrates Hispanic Heritage with the acclaimed Latin Fiesta Ensemble featuring Maria del Pico Taylor, which will invigorate audiences with hot salsa; classical, contemporary Latin; Baroque and Afro-Cuban conga pieces, followed by organist Cherry Rhodes ticketed performance in Verizon Hall. Please check online for additional information and a performance schedule.
Kimmel Center Presents' 2006/2007 season is supported by: Mellon Financial Corporation, University of Pennsylvania Health System, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, ARC Properties, and The William Penn Foundation. American Airlines is the Official Airline of Kimmel Center Presents. Toyota is the Official Vehicle of Kimmel Center Presents Jazz and World Pop programming. NBC-10 is a Media Partner for Kimmel Center Presents. The Philadelphia Inquirer, the Philadelphia Daily News, and Philly.com are media sponsors for the Great Orchestras on Tour series.
KIMMEL CENTER PRESENTS
World Pop Mix
Tuesday, October 10, 2006 | 8pm
Perelman Theater
GERARD EDERY, Moroccan-American Vocalist
(representing the Sephardic Jewish tradition)
JAMEY HADDAD, World Music Percussionist
(from the Lebanese-American Christian community)
ZAFER TAWIL, Oudist
(from the Palestinian-American Muslim community),br>
ARUNA SAIRAM, South Indian Classical Vocalist
(representing the ancient Hindu sacred tradition)
SUSAN HELLAUER, Gregorian Chant Vocalist
(a founding member of the U.S. based ancient music ensemble Anonymous 4)
DAQQA ROUDANIA OF TAROUDANT, Islamic Mystical Tradition Vocalists and Percussionists
(representing southern Morocco’s Sufi tradition)
************
FREE AT THE KIMMEL EVENTS
Saturday, October 14, 2006, 11:00am
Koresh Dance Company
Mommy & Me
Saturday, October 14, 2006, 1:00pm
Latin Fiesta Ensemble
With
Maria del Pico Taylor
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