New York Public Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center Presents NEARER TO EAST TOday

The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center presents Nearer to East: Contemporary Chamber Music from the Arab World & Beyond in the Bruno Walter Auditorium today, January 12, 2013 at 2:30pm.

The concert features works and premieres by Karim Al-Zand, Kinan Azmeh, Halim El-Dabh, Bushra El-Turk, Mohammed Fairouz, Zaid Jabri & Kareem Roustom Karim Al-Zand, Kinan Azmeh, Halim El-Dabh, Bushra El-Turk, Mohammed Fairouz, Zaid Jabri and Kareem Roustom performed by the new music ensemble, Lunatics at Large, with special guests soprano Christine Moore, pianist Kathleen Tagg, flutist Laura Falzon and visual artist Kevork Mourad. Highlighting selections by composers who live and work in the U.S.A. and Europe but have strong ties to the Arab world, including Egypt, Lebanon, Syria and Iraq, this extraordinary program brings together a collection of passionate, eloquent, and bold works by a distinctly prestigious group whose music both reflects the past and speaks in the idioms of the present.

Karim Al-Zand's music is characterized as "strong and startlingly lovely" by the Boston Globe. Kinan Azmeh has been hailed as "intensely soulful" by The New York Times and as having an "incredibly rich sound" by the CBC. Halim El-Dabh is Egypt's foremost living composer of classical music. His prolific career thus far has included several operas, symphonies, ballets, concertos, orchestral works and film scores as well as garnering two Fulbright awards, two Guggenheim Fellowships, two Rockefeller Foundation Fellowships and three MacDowell Colony residencies. Bushra El-Turk has been selected to be part of the 13th International Young Composers Meeting after being part of the Sentieri Selvaggi International Composers Master class in Milan. She has also had her string quartet selected as one of five works in the University of Aberdeen International Music Prize. Gramophone Magazine cites Mohammed Fairouz as "a post-millenial Schubert" and the New Yorker declares him "an expert in vocal writing." Zaid Jabri has won first prize in the Adam Didur Composers' Competition in Sanok. Kareem Roustom is an Emmy- nominated composer who has been awarded a fellowship to the Sundance Film Composers Lab and is also a recipient of BMI's Pete Carpenter Fellowship in film and TV music. The New York Times describes Lunatics at Large as "young, energetic, and finely polished." The Leipziger Volkszeiting describes soprano Christine Moore as "radiant."

Saturday, January 12, 2013 at 2:30pm Nearer to East: Contemporary Chamber Music from the Arab World Bruno Walter Auditorium, Library for the Performing Arts, Lincoln Center 40 Lincoln Center Plaza/111 Amsterdam Avenue, New York, NY 10023 Admission: FREE. For more information, follow this link: www.nypl.org/events/programs/2013/01/12/nearer-east-chamber-music-arab-world.

Pictured: Kinan Azmeh, Composer. Photo by Jill Steinberg.