Aga Khan Music Initiative in Central Asia presents 11 city North American Tour of ‘Spiritual Sounds of Central Asia: Nomads, Mystics, and Troubadours’

Seventeen musicians from Central Asia, a culturally dynamic and rapidly changing region, will share their mastery of traditions at once ancient and contemporary in an 11-city North American tour beginning on October 12th. The tour, “Spiritual Sounds of Central Asia: Nomads, Mystics, and Troubadours,” will provide North American audiences with a rare opportunity to hear music from Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Qaraqalpakstan (an autonomous region in Uzbekistan). Concerts will feature a panoramic range of vocal and instrumental music that showcases some of Central Asia?s finest performers.

The artists, several of whom are making their North American debuts, will include the legendary Azerbaijani vocalist Alim Qasimov, whom the French newspaper Le Monde hailed as ?one of the most beautiful voices of our era,? and his daughter Fargana; Bardic Divas, four women from Kazakhstan and Qaraqalpakstan who demonstrate the power and beauty of the female voice; and the Badakhshan Ensemble, which performs trance-inducing mystical songs from the majestic Pamir Mountains of Tajikistan and Afghanistan, an area known in Persian as bam-i dunya, ?the roof of the world.? The concerts will include introductory documentary films about the featured musicians; supertitles with translations of song lyrics; and live, large-screen video close-ups. In addition, the tour will include children?s programs, university lectures and residencies, pre-concert discussions and museum presentations.

The 2007 tour is a groundbreaking collaboration between two major institutions: the Aga Khan Music Initiative in Central Asia (AKMICA), and the New York-based World Music Institute (WMI). AKMICA, a program of the Geneva-based Aga Khan Trust for Culture (AKTC), aims to preserve and nurture the indigenous musical traditions of Central Asia, and to ensure the transmission of the region?s musical heritage to new generations of artists and audiences. WMI, a renowned performing arts presenter, is dedicated to presenting the finest traditional music and dance from around the world.

More at the source: http://www.akdn.org/music/usatour_2007_pr.htm

AKMICA: http://www.akdn.org/music/index.htm

Tour Venues and Dates

For more information, please contact:

Cindy Byram PR
CindyByram@aol.com
212-545-7536 x 21 office
201-400-4104 cell
49 West 27th St #930 New York, NY 10001
www.cindybyram.com