New Deal Cafe: Okbari

Date: June 28, 2008 (Sunday)
Time: 6:00 - 8:00 P.M.
Place: New Deal Cafe, 113 Centerway (Roosevelt Center), Greenbelt MD 20770,
(301) 474-5642 (directions)
Tickets: no cover

Appearing one night only at Greenbelt's New Deal Cafe are Amos Libby on oud and Eric LaPerna on tabla, also known as Okbari Middle East Ensemble. Okbari performs Ottoman classical and Turkish contemporary art music along with works from the Armenian and Anatolian folk traditions. Okbari also presents Arabic folk and classical music as well traditional songs from Greece and the Balkans. Okbari has released five albums since they formed in 1995, and play widely throughout the Northeast. Okbari has shared the stage in Istanbul, Turkey with the Kemani Serkan Ensemble and the Rumeli Meyhane Fasil Ensemble. Amos has appeared onstage as a guest percussionist in 2008 with the legendary Gypsy clarinetist Selim Sesler and his Trakya Fasil Grubu in Beyogl

Audio:
MySpace
YouTube

National Gallery of Art: Tara Artemis Kamangar

Date: June 21, 2009 (Sunday)
Time: 6:30 P.M.
Place: West Building Main Floor, West Garden Court of the National Gallery of Art, 6 Street and Constitution Avenue NW, Washington DC 20565 (location)
Tickets: "open to the public, free of charge. Admittance is on a first-come, first-seated basis, beginning at one half hour before each concert"

Tara Artemis Kamangar, pianist, performs solo the music of by Hossein, Khaleghi, and Prokofiev.

Video:
TaraArtemis.com

Composer Between Worlds: Dimitrie Cantemir

Date: June 11, 2009 (Thursday)
Time: 7:30 P.M.
Place: Meyer Auditorium, Freer Gallery of Art, (directions)
Tickets: free with online ticketing via TicketMaster

The Turkish trio Neva Özgen (kemenche), Murat Aydemir (tanbur), and Mesut Özgen (guitar) are joined by Lux Musica on baroque harpsichord, flute, violin, and viol.

Travel to 18th Century Istanbul and Moscow through the music of composer, scholar, and diplomat Dimitrie Cantemir, a flamboyant and brilliant figure who served both the Ottoman sultan and the Russian tsar. A speaker of eleven languages, he wrote a history of the Ottomans that inspired Edward Gibbon with The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. His treatise on Turkish classical music included more than 350 original compositions. After he led an ill-fated rebellion against the Ottomans in Moldavia, Cantemir escaped to Moscow, where he helped translate the Byzantine Greek liturgy into Russian. Turkish instrumentalists join the Baroque music ensemble Lux Musica to recreate the sounds of Cantemir's Moldavian homeland and his careers in Istanbul and Moscow, where he organized lavish musical events with his daughter, a harpsichordist trained in the Italian style. Presented in conjunction with The Tsars and the East.

Sponsors: Tsars & the East exhibition at the Freer/Sackler Galleries of Art (image gallery)