SPIRIT OF FES 2006
“Spirit of Fès” Tour Brings Islamic World’s Famed Music Festival to U.S.
October Tour Carries Spiritual and Musical Message from Morocco’s Fès Festival;
Anonymous 4’s Susan Hellauer, Lebanese-American Jamey Haddad,
Jewish-Moroccan Gerard Edery, Palestinian-American Zafer Tawil,
South Indian Aruna Sairam and Moroccan Sufi Group Daqqa Roudania
Join For One-Time-Only Collaboration;
Globally, the fractiousness, warfare, and ever-intensifying political rhetoric of our era often makes it seem as if there are unbridgeable chasms between cultures that no amount of effort or good intention can surmount. However, the extraordinary Spirit of Fès tour, which brings together celebrated artists from Muslim, Jewish, Christian, and Hindu backgrounds to perform together in a spirit of mutual respect and collaboration, offers a glimmer of hope during a dark time.
The Spirit of Fès tour, which is being organized by the U.S.-based non-profit The Spirit of Fes with leading firm Columbia Artists Management, Inc. (CAMI), has its roots in Morocco’s world-acclaimed annual Fès Festival of World Sacred Music and its companion event, the Fès Forum. Held each summer in Morocco’s former imperial city of Fès (previously spelled as “Fez” in English), these twin events bring together artists, audiences, intellectuals, political figures, social activists, and spiritual leaders from across the globe. Founded twelve years ago in the wake of the first Gulf War (another time of great international tension), the Fès Festival’s mission is to create a venue for dynamic and respectful intercultural and inter-religious dialogue between the world’s diverse cultures.
Over the years, this singular event has attracted some of the world’s most celebrated performers and cultural ambassadors, including Indian sitarist Ravi Shankar, Senegalese vocalist Youssou N’Dour, Brazilian singer and guitarist (and Brazil’s current Minister of Culture) Gilberto Gil, and South African vocalist Miriam Makeba, among many others, as well as a host of soloists and ensembles from Fès itself and from around Morocco.
The festival and forum have earned praise from organizations and individuals across the globe. In 2001, the United Nations honored the Fès Festival as one of just seven “Unsung Heroes of Dialogue,” citing the festival as reaching “across the divide to the Other.” In 2006, the Geneva-based Ousseimi Foundation awarded the festival the Ousseimi Prize For Tolerance (the 2005 winner was Nelson Mandela). The unique and ancient environment of Fès lends itself perfectly to the festival’s goals; it is a city which for centuries has been one of the great centers of spiritual, political and intellectual life within the Muslim world, and which has been home to generations of Islamic, Jewish, and Christian communities living side by side. This setting makes a perfect home for new cross-cultural encounters which honor and bridge our common humanity.
The idea behind the Spirit of Fès tour is to bring the Fès Festival’s character and ethos to new audiences across the US. Quite appropriately given current events, the tour begins its humane counterpoint of intercultural and multi-faith dialogue on Oct. 7 in Washington DC, the nation’s political heart, at the Smithsonian Institution. The free concert on the Freer Sackler Gallery’s steps to the Mall will reach a large cross-section of the community. The Spirit of Fès also stops at New York’s Carnegie Hall and UCLA’s Royce Hall, as well as at world-class concert halls across the Northeast, the Midwest, and California.
The lineup of master musicians participating in the Spirit of Fès represents some of the world’s most sophisticated artistic traditions. Vocalist Susan Hellauer, a New York native, is one of the founding members of the extraordinarily popular early music ensemble Anonymous 4, whose recordings have sold well over than one million copies worldwide and whom Billboard Magazine recently praised, saying: “For sheer radiance…no else comes close.” The group’s newest recording, Gloryland (Harmonia Mundi), a critically lauded album of American traditional music, was just released. Hellauer also teaches at Queens College of the City University of New York.
South Indian classical singer Aruna Sairam was born in Mumbai (Bombay), India, to a musical family; her mother was a noted vocalist herself, and her father a connoisseur who hosted some of their country’s greatest musicians and dancers. With her rich and flexible voice, Sairam is one of the most celebrated practitioners of the intricate Carnatic (South Indian classical) style, which is rooted in the devotional traditions of South India’s Hindu temples. Mumbai’s Indian Express newspaper praised a Sairam performance in which "deep rounded notes were held for unbelievable lengths, which finally swerved and moved in soft nuances of sound."
The Daqqa Roudania of Taroudant hails from southern Morocco. They are a group of craftsmen and tanners who are also initiates in a Sufi (mystical Muslim) community, or tariqa. Their rituals bring together a swirl of music, chant, dance, and percussion in order to attain an ecstatic state of oneness with God. The Daqqa’s ceremonies—which are at once religious ritual, concert, and social occasion—utilize such instruments as bendir (frame) and tarija (clay) tambourines, the unique Moroccan metal castanets called qarqaba, and the wind instrument called a neffar.
Born in Casablanca to a Jewish family, Gerard Edery is regarded as one of today’s leading interpreters of Sephardic vocal music. Trained as a Western classical baritone, he has performed more than thirty roles with opera companies around the United States. With his group the Sons of Sepharad, Edery also works with such famed Jewish cantors as Alberto Mizrahi and Aaron Bensoussan, and is a frequent guest cantor at synagogues and Jewish community centers throughout North America.
Lebanese-American percussionist Jamey Haddad is one of the most notable world music and jazz percussionists in the United States. An associate professor at Boston’s Berklee School of Music, Haddad has collaborated with some of the country’s most famed musicians, including Paul Simon, Art Garfunkel, Carly Simon, Joe Lovano, the Paul Winter Consort, and Betty Buckley.
Zafer Tawil is a Palestinian-American multi-instrumentalist based in New York City. Playing the violin, oud (lute), percussion, and qanoun (hammered dulcimer), he has performed with some of the Arab world’s most celebrated artists, including violinist and oud master Simon Shaheen and rai singer Cheb Mami, as well as with Western superstars like Sting.
Details on the Festival are available at www.fesfestival.com
October 4 – New York.
International artists arrive and travel with U.S. based artists and production team to Philadelphia for rehearsals and to tech the show.
October 5, 6 and 7
- Philadelphia: Rehearsals
October 7 - Washington, D.C.
Smithsonian Institution’s Freer Sackler Gallery / Mall Steps
October 10 - Philadelphia, PA
Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts – Perelman Theater
Performance – 7:30 p.m.
Educational Components:
Masterclass – TBD Day of Performance
Artist Colloquium – 6:30 p.m.
October 11 - Storrs, CT
University of Connecticut - Jorgensen Auditorium
Performance – 7:30 p.m.
October 12 - Schenectady, NY
Art Center and Theater of Schenectady - Proctor's Theatre
Performance – 8:00 p.m.
October 13 - Purchase, NY
Purchase College, SUNY – Concert Hall
Performance - 8:00 p.m.
October 14 - New York, NY
Carnegie Hall - Zankel Hall-World Music Institute
Performance – 8:30 p.m.
October 17 - Buffalo, NY
University at Buffalo / Center for the Arts
Performance – 8:00 p.m.
October 19 - West Lafayette, IN
Purdue University- Loeb Playhouse
Performance – 7:30 p.m.
October 20 & 21 - Urbana, IL
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign – Tryon Festival Theatre
Performances - 7:30 p.m.
October 24 - Irvine, CA
Irvine Barclay Theatre
Performance – 8:00 p.m.
October 25 - Riverside, CA
University of California at Riverside – University Theater
Performance – 8:00 p.m.
October 26 - Los Angeles, CA
UCLA Center for the Performing Arts – Royce Hall
Performance – 8:00 p.m.
October 27 - Santa Cruz, CA
University of California at Santa Cruz – Music Center Recital Hall
Performance – 8:00 p.m.
October 28 - Chico, CA
California State University/Chico – Laxson Auditorium
Performance – 7:30 p.m.
October 29 - San Francisco, CA
Jewish Community Center of San Francisco – Kanbar Hall
Performance – 7:00 p.m.