Sanaz & friends | Special guest: Mohamed Najem

Sanaz: voice, Benjamin Stein: santoor, tar, baglama and oud  Steffen Thormählen: Percussion, Uwe Böttcher: double bass, violin and viola    Sanaz's  songs and poems really get under your skin. They are about longing: for  love, freedom and for self-determination. Sometimes with a gentle,  sometimes with a strong voice, but always impressive, always  provocative, the poet and singer recites her mystical texts. Further she  also sets these texts to music and performs them together with her  repertoire of Turkish and Azerbaijani folk songs.  Sanaz comes from  the Azerbaijani territory of Iran. The silencing of all female voices  and the threat of reprisals against a critical, creative woman caused  her to leave her home country in 2008 and move to Germany in 2010, after  two years spent in Istanbul.  She began her musical career in 2012  with the music group "Mah-e Manouche", which won the sponsorship award  of the cultural department of the town of Wuppertal in 2017/18.  Encouraged  by the immensely positive feedback and praise of many fellow artists,  musicians and critics she started a new project in 2019, in which she  recites her own texts in Persian and German and sings songs from Persia,  Azerbaijan and Turkey.  She is accompanied by an illustrious  ensemble of outstanding musicians: Benjamin Stein on oud, baglama,  santoor and tar, by Uwe Böttcher on double bass, violin and viola and by  Steffen Thormählen on various percussion instruments.    https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCmZ7aZmWZI5EM716Kbue5aw/videos

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Mohamed Najem

Mohamed Najem represents a new  generation of highly-trained musicians from the Middle-East. With ears  and eyes for the whole world, he uses classical techniques in an Arabic  interpretation, and thus creates an original sound and style on his  clarinet. His compositions reflect an eclectic combination of rhythms  and melodies.

Born in 1984 in Jerusalem and raised  in Bethlehem, Najem won the first prize in Arabic Music at the 2005  Palestinian national competition. He started clarinet and nay at the Edward Saïd National Conservatory of Music (ESNCM) in Bethlehem and graduated in 2011 from the Regional Conservatory of Music of Angers in France, with Professor Emilie Jacquin.

In 2011, Najem returned to  Palestine, where he became the first Palestinian professional clarinet  teacher. He has taught clarinet and nay at the ESNCM in Ramallah, Nablus  and Bethlehem for three years. He was also the academic supervisor of  the ESNCM Ramallah branch and the head of the winds section between 2011  and 2014.

Najem is a founding member of the  Palestine National Orchestra, Palestine’s first professional orchestra  created in 2011. He has played as a soloist for the Palestinian Youth Orchestra for several years. A versatile and in demand performer in Palestine, he  has performed and recorded with several Palestinian and international  music groups and projects, including traditional, popular and classical  ensembles, played in local and international festivals.

Today, Najem is a freelance musician and resides in Paris, where he is developing his project “Mohamed Najem and Friends”. He also plays in a duo with the German accordionist Manfred Leuchter (Encounter).

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Fotos @ Manfred Leuchter, Lucie Ahmad, reza Rashidpour