Musikzimmer: Qantara Trio

Musikzimmer: Qantara Trio

Founded in 2020 as part of Bridges - Music Connects, the Qantara Trio takes the audience on a musical journey through civilization. Traditional, classical and contemporary sounds from Europe and the Middle East are musically interwoven. Breaks in style, complexity, cultural parallels and poetry resound in the rare combination of vocals, harp and oud in the form of Sephardic and German love songs, flamenco rhythms, Persian poetry and Syrian lullabies.

Cast: Hesham Hamra (oud), Samira Memarzadeh, (harp), Jessica Poppe (vocals)

The discussion concert will be moderated by Alena van Wahnem, a trained ethnologist with a focus on artistic examination of Eurocentrism and decolonisation processes in West Africa, Latin America and Europe. She conceives experimental-artistic exhibition and concert formats. She participated in the Bridges Orchestra as a violinist in 2019 and 2021.

Musikzimmer

With the "Musikzimmer" series, KfW Stiftung creates a new stage for music and transcultural encounters. Attending the concerts in the historic ambience of Villa 102 offers the audience not only an insight into the wealth of musical culture, but also the opportunity for personal exchange about the diversity of composition, design and instruments from around the world. Perismon is an ensemble of the transcultural music initiative Bridges - Music Connects. 

Bridges - Chamber Orchestra

The Qantara Trio is one of twelve transcultural ensembles of the Bridges Chamber Orchestra. The musicians of the chamber orchestra are active in ensemble and educational formats, which are characterized by the interplay of instruments from various regions of the European, Asian and American continents, incorporating the musical cultural backgrounds of the participants. Concert activities range from refugee shelters to the Alte Oper Frankfurt to the German government, and from concert series in venues and museums in Frankfurt to international festivals in Italy and Uzbekistan. 

"Bridges" has gone through KfW Stiftung's "ANKOMMER.Perspektive Deutschland" programme and won KfW Stiftung's Special Impact Prize. The Bridges Chamber Orchestra was appointed Orchestra in Residence of the Kronberg Academy in September 2022 and was shortlisted for the Innovation 2022 Prize of the German Orchestra Foundation. It is one of the laureates of the Hessian Integration Prize 2022 and received the German Record Critics' Award 2/2021 (category Grenzgänge) for its debut album "Identigration", released in 2021 in co-production with the Hessischer Rundfunk (Hessian Radio Broadcasting). In 2019, the Bridges Chamber Orchestra was awarded The Power of the Arts 2019 as a nationwide lighthouse project for lived diversity and integration at eye level.

More information about Bridges can be found here.

Images:

01. Qantara Trio Fotografin: Ellen Schmaus
02. Musikzimmer Grupo Maloka am 22.03.2023, Fotograf: Salar Baygan
03. Musikzimmer Grupo Maloka am 22.03.2023, Fotograf: Salar Baygan
04. Musikzimmer Grupo Maloka am 22.03.2023, Fotograf: Salar Baygan
05. Musikzimmer Grupo Maloka am 22.03.2023, Fotograf: Salar Baygan