Well, in a few hours i'll be getting on a plane to San Francisco for a week of rehearsals, workshops and a concert with Aswat, a Bay-Area-based Arabic choir and orchestra--at which I'll be one of several guest artists, including a wonderful vocalist from Tunisia, Noureddine Kallel.  For any of you in the Bay Area, the concert will be this coming Saturday, Dec. 1st in San Mateo.  details can be found at Aswat's website, www.zawaya.org



I'll be giving a few maqam masterclasses on thursday evening and sunday afternoon, details at www.maqamlessons.com



I'm very much looking forward to seeing a lot of friends and students from Lark camp--I have to say, I really like the world music scene out there in northern california.  Unlike here in New York, it seems like a lot of musicians from a lot of different traditions know each other; they get together and explore each other's music quite a bit.  Here in New York, I know almost all of the Arab musicians & musicians who play for Middle Eastern Dance; but I know only a few Indian Musicians, and almost no musicians from other traditions... But I know they're out there!  (I'LL FIND YOU!!!)



But of course I'll miss my wife for a week.  We just had a lovely little vacation together in the Hudson Valley, at a place called Greenwood Lake, near Warwick, NY.  (we stayed at a wonderful inn called Anton's on the Lake www.antonsonthelake.com that I highly recommend).  We visited a spa, a winery, and a lovely art and craft town called Sugar Loaf, NY.  It was a nice little vacation; we went there last year, too, for some apple picking (you can see a sickeningly cute picture of us posing our faces in a cut-out painting of a lamb and a pig in front of an apple tree--from our trip last year--in my gallery).



So I'm off!

Before you listen, please take a minute and vote for us (Zikrayat) for the

2008 Independent Music Awards--we need your votes to win!

vote here: www.musiciansatlas.com

see the post below for more details.



This is our most recent performance from Alwan www.alwanforthearts.org

last Saturday night.  We had a great crowd and I think it was our best show yet!  The lineup was:



myself, on violin, vocals, rababa

Bridget Robbins, Nay

Tareq Abboushi, Buzuq, vocals

Dimitri Mikelis, Oud

Johnny Farraj, Riqq, vocals

Nikolai Ruskin, Tabla, vocals

     with

Salah Ragab on vocals

Gaida on vocals

     and

Dances by Dameshe, Leela, Nahara, and Yowalka



This is the first set of the show, and it featured Salah singing with us for the first time--he sang three songs beautifully; "Gameel Gamal," the second of the three, was really amazing. . . so full of soul and tarab; it's hard to believe he's performing for the first time--he's only 19, and has never sang publicly before this event!



Here's the set:

1.  Doulab Zanjaran   --(composed by myself)

2.  Pickles --(composed by Tareq Abboushi

3.  "Naima veil"--a dance number we found on an old film of Naima Akif called "Ahibbak Ya Hassan"; Dameshe did a solo to this number.

4.  "Ya-msahar eini" --a song for the pop singer Rami Ayash, featuring Salah Ragab

5.  "Gameel Gamal"--a song by Farid el-Atrash, featuring Salah; Nahara did a Shamadan solo (flaming candles on her head) to this number.

6.  "Yana Yana"--a song for Sabah, featuring Salah

7.  "Mafeesh Filoos"--a song for Lebanese singer Nasri Shams id-Din; with myself on vocals;  Dameshe, Leela, and Yowalka performed a group choreography to this number.



Enjoy!

Download (49.6MB audio)

Dear Friends, Listeners, Fans,



First, our Album "Zikrayat: Live at Lotus" has been named a Finalist in the 2008 Independent Music Awards!  I'm very excited, but I need your help: fan's votes will determine the final winner, and if we win they will make substantial promotional efforts for us in 2008, including selling our music in Border's Books.



So please take a minute to visit: the IMA jukebox at:

IMA Jukebox

and vote for us now.  If that link doesn't work, go to:

http://www.musiciansatlas.com/pages/IMAFinalist

click on "Album Finalists" and go to the category "Live Performances"

If you'd like to hear samples of other tracks from the album not included on the jukebox, please visit:

http://zikrayatmusic.com



The other news is, you can see for yourself, that i've updated and re-coded my website so that it and this blog page would be one entity rather than two.  I've been learning HTML and CSS coding over the last few months (in order to supplement my income a bit), and even though the website doesn't look that different--you can see the old site at

http://samimusicworld.com/archive/originalsite/index.html

I've entirely re-coded it into CSS to make it standards compliant.  The design is the original one by my wife; the new design doesn't change much visually, except changing most of the text into html rather than photoshop images.  you can view the source code if you like.



So, I know I keep saying i'm going to resume putting up regular podcasts (as well as the maqamlessons), and i will--thanks to all of you from all over the world who have written asking about them!--but it was suggested to me that i should actually start blogging, to keep fans and friends informed--and i realized that i haven't been taking full advantage of this page--i can put up blog posts in addition to podcast mp3s.  So this marks the start of that: i'll be putting up blog entries about what's going on with myself and zikrayat, in addition to podcast mp3s. 



Thanks for listening and writing!



Yours,

Sami

Amir ElSaffar, Iraqi-American Jazz Trumpet player, Singer and Santur player, discusses his newly released CD Two Rivers. He talks about the different ways he has combined Iraqi Music (of the Baghdad Maqam tradition) with Jazz in these pieces, and talks a little about his history with both kinds of music.



The CD is available now on Pi Recordings and at amazon.com



for more information on Amir and the album, please visit the Two Rivers myspace page and Amir's Website: www.amirelsaffar.com



CD release party at Joe's pub, Monday Oct. 22nd, 9:30pm

Download (46.8MB audio)

Anne Elise and I chat about The global youth village

http://globalyouthvillage.org/,

where we were teaching in July; and the Jefferson Center

http://jeffcenter.org/

in Roanoke, VA, where she is the educational programs coordinator

Download (43.1MB audio)