Boom.Diwan x Nduduzo Makhathini x Jean-Michel Pilc

Global Collaboration - Supported by the US Mission to the UAE

Thursday, Apr 14 @ 9.30pm, 2022

The Red Theatre

Past Event

Khaleeji rhythms and sounds in musical conversation with global jazz

Join us for music followed by a community suhoor featuring Boom.Diwan (Kuwait/UAE) with Nduduzo Makhathini (South Africa) and Jean-Michel Pilc (France/USA/Canada). In the spirit of Ramadan, this concert highlights and values the power of dialog for understanding, peace, and resolution.

Boom.Diwan x Nduduzo Makhathini unite for their first live performance together celebrating the release of their acclaimed suite Minarets, commissioned by The Arts Center. An immersive ritual of music rooted in Khaleeji pearl diving traditions meeting South African jazz. The suite of immersive ritual music touches on ideas of cosmopolitanism, community, dialogue, and healing.

Boom.Diwan x Jean-Michel Pic debut a new collaboration, uniting Khaleeji pearl diving traditions, with Franco-American jazz pianist Jean-Michel Pilc, a ”Musical genius” (Washington Post), who is known for his harmonic reinventions of standards. Boom.Diwan invites Pilc to dialogue with and reinvent new harmonic worlds with the new Khaleeji Jazz Standards that they are known for. The concert builds on Boom.Diwan’s ongoing concept of exchange with guests from different cultural traditions in the cosmopolitan spirit of the pearl trade.

Listen to the music:

Biographies

Boom.Diwan

Founded by guitarist and applied ethnomusicologist Ghazi Al-Mulaifi, Boom.Diwan is a collaborative global jazz ensemble that revives the cosmopolitan tradition of the Kuwaiti pearl diving music of the Indian Ocean trade. With influences spanning Zanzibar to Calicut, improvisation, fluidity, and dialogue are at the center of Boom.Diwan.

Nduduzo Makhathini

Nduduzo Makhathini is an acclaimed pianist and composer, and the first ever South African musician signed to the legendary Blue Note Records. Makhathini’s musical output has led him to be described by Seton Hawkins of All About Jazz to be “a truly singular pianist, an astonishingly gifted composer, and a deeply nuanced thinker on the music…one of the [South Africa]‘s most remarkable talents.”

Jean-Michel Pilc

Jean-Michel Pilc is a “dazzlingly inventive” (NY Times) pianist and composer who has performed with numerous jazz giants around the world, best known for his solo and trio recordings and serving as Harry Belafonte’s musical director. Pilc is an educator (formerly NYU Steinhardt and now McGill University, and a founder of the Improvisation Workshop Project.