World-class musicians took to the stage at London’s prestigious Royal Albert Hall on Wednesday 20 June in a unique concert to honour the Diamond Jubilee of Mawlana Hazar Imam. It celebrated the diversity, richness and vitality of Muslim musical heritage in a contemporary expression.
Jubilee featured Master Musicians of the Aga Khan Music Initiative and special guests Kronos Quartet and Bassekou Kouyaté in a performance of newly-created compositions that demonstrate the way musical creativity has historically developed from the meeting of different cultures.
The concert reflected the Aga Khan’s 60-year-long commitment to supporting pluralism and civil society and to providing the arts a prominent place in the work of the Aga Khan Development Network (AKDN), where cultural development programmes are closely integrated with social and economic development.
Master Musicians of the Aga Khan Music Initiative included:
- Homayoun Sakhi, an innovative master performer on the rubab, the long-necked lute that many Afghans consider their country’s national instrument
- Wu Man, a world-renowned virtuoso on the pipa, a four-stringed Chinese lute, who has done more than anyone to popularise the instrument in both the East and West
- Sirojiddin Juraev, a brilliant performer from a lineage of players of the dutar, tanbur and sato – long-necked lutes indigenous to his native region of northern Tajikistan
- Basel Rajoub, an award-winning saxophonist and composer-improviser from Syria, whose inspirations include Middle Eastern rhythms and jazz
- Saler Nader, a virtuoso tabla player who began studying under the legendary Ustad Zakir Hussain at the age of seven
- Feras Charestan, an accomplished and innovative performer on the qanun, a Middle Eastern zither
- Andrea Piccioni, a native of Rome and a master percussionist and performer on frame drums
- Abbos Kosimov, who comes from a famous musical family in Uzbekistan and is a master performer on the doira, an Uzbek tambourine
The first half of the concert featured the Master Musicians of the Aga Khan Music Initiative and Kronos Quartet, the world-renowned collective who have been working with AKMI since 2008 and have commissioned more than 900 new and original works and arrangements for string quartet since their inception in 1973.
In the second half of the programme, the Master Musicians of the Aga Khan Music Initiative were joined by a trio of Malian musicians led by the ngoni player Bassekou Kouyaté, a long-term AKMI collaborator, whose recording Segu Blue won Album of the Year & African Artist of the Year at the BBC Radio 3 Awards for World Music and received a Grammy nomination for the follow-up I Speak Fula. The trio also included Kouyaté’s wife Amy Sacko and daughter Oumou Kouyaté on vocals.
Produced by the Ismaili Centre London, Aga Khan Music Initiative and Serious UK.
