NDR Bigband / Golnar Shahyar / Kinan Azmeh / Wolf Kerschek

• Jazz, Blues, Swing & Chanson

With their latest programme for the Hamburg International Music Festival entitled »A Flow of Protests and Kindness«, the NDR Bigband and Hamburg arranger and big band leader Wolf Kerschek conjure up the hope of the peace-building power of music to overcome cultural divides and differences. In one set each with singer Golnar Shahyar and clarinettist Kinan Azmeh respectively, they create the utopia of a music that is universally understandable and able to heal wounds.

Golnar Shahyar is a new face to work with the NDR Bigband. Born and raised in Iran, she also has Canadian citizenship and currently lives most of the time in Vienna. A restless person out of necessity, a world traveller in her music, who translates the essence of her experiences as a woman striving for self-determination between cultures into the abstract, sensual language of poetry and music with overwhelming force and enormous precision.

Kinan Azmeh, on the other hand, has been working with the NDR Bigband for some time now. After several joint productions, a joint CD was released in autumn 2021 – called »Flow«: Wolf Kerschek had dressed up Azmeh‘s compositions into tailor-made arrangements, and the NDR Bigband garnished the whole thing with bravura and sophistication. Like Golnar Shahyar, Kinan Azmeh is a musician for whom the course of history has made it difficult to return to his home country.

Born in Damascus in 1976 and raised in Syria, where Arabic and Levantine sounds filled the air, it was important to him early on as a musician not to be restricted to his geographical place of origin. He pursued an education in Western »classical« music and eventually graduated from the Juilliard School in New York with a degree in the clarinet. He soon garnered a reputation as a musician for whom any stylistic definitions were too narrow. There is just one profession he has ever remained loyal to, and that is music. Beyond borders and without restrictions.

PERFORMERS

NDR Bigband jazz ensemble

Golnar Shahyar vocals

Kinan Azmeh clarinet

Wolf Kerschek director