MIDDLE EAST MEDITATIONS Tour Celebrates Collaboration of Jazz at the Overture Center

Experience "Middle East Meditations" when Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis featuring Naseer Shamma, oud, play at Overture Center on Saturday, Feb. 4 at 7:30 p.m. in Overture Hall. Tickets ($35-85) are available at overture.org.

The Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra (JLCO) comprises 15 of the finest jazz soloists and ensemble players today. Under Music Director Wynton Marsalis, the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra performs a vast repertoire, from rare historic compositions to Jazz at Lincoln Center-commissioned works, including compositions and arrangements by Duke Ellington, Thelonious Monk, Mary Lou Williams, Benny Goodman and many others.

JLCO and Wynton Marsalis will be joined by internationally renowned musician and humanitarian, Naseer Shamma. Known for being one of the world's greatest oud (an ancient Middle Eastern stringed instrument) virtuosos, he has also received numerous awards for his contributions to promoting and advancing the oud and Arabic music all over the world. This tour will celebrate the first collaboration for JLCO and oud and will feature new works arranged by Marsalis, Shamma and JLCO members.

Shamma and Wynton Marsalis first met at the behest of the Abu Dhabi Music and Arts Festival in 2017, which led to more than a revelatory musical meeting of the minds, but to a shared belief in the power of music and collaboration to bring cultures and people together, beyond politics and religion. They reunited later that year for a concert in Marciac, France, where reviews called it an "unprecedented fusion between Jazz and the oud instrument."

Middle East Meditations continues the orchestra's season of cross-cultural offerings that illuminate, actualize and reaffirm the notion of jazz as a global language and the music's power to bridge divides and coalesce distinct communities.

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