Liban Jazz Comes to Syria
Liban Jazz Director Karim Ghattas talks about his plans to bring Lebanon’s most popular jazz festival over the border to Syria.
What is Liban Jazz?
Liban Jazz is Lebanon’s premier jazz festival. I established Liban Jazz in 2004 and have since promoted 40 concerts by internationally acclaimed Arab and foreign jazz artists like Anouar Brahem, Paolo Fresu and Archie Shepp to name a few.
How do you choose the artists?
The keywords are new and different, but not necessarily famous. We have featured internationally acclaimed artists with long and impressive CVs, as well as young musicians that I have stumbled across playing in a small bar. Furthermore, we are dedicated to quality and current music. We only feature artists who have just released an album or are about to release one.
Our concerts are for those who would like to discover a new kind of music that they don’t usually hear. We want to address the local Arab audience and not tourists. Therefore, we never arrange concerts in summer. Rather, we present them from September to June.
Why Syria?
I first came to Syria as a refugee during the 2006 war in Lebanon and I fell in love with the country. I’ve been spending every weekend here. I’ve discovered that Syrians are very interested in cultural projects and I was astounded by the thriving cultural scene here. Although many artist friends like Marcel Khalife told me how great the Syrian audience is, it was only when Norwegian pianist Bugge Wesseltoft, who is going to perform in Lebanon this month, asked me to arrange a concert for him in Syria that I seriously considered the idea of promoting music here.
So what concerts can the Syrian audience expect?
We launched our concert series in Damascus Opera House this May with a performance by award-winning Norwegian pianist Bugge Wesseltoft. He played excerpts from his new album that is to be released at the end of the year. We are also organising a concert by the Italian-American trio AIR in September and there’s much more to come.
For more information on Liban Jazz go to www.libanjazz.com.
