When we decided that my friend Khulood da’mi should hold her Christmas exhibition at Hampstead Lane my first thought was – what sort of music could we have to launch it? An oud? Yes, perfect. So I was very happy to be introduced to Syrian oud player – Rihab Azar.
Book here for the concert – £15 to include wine and nibbles.
Rihab graduated nearly ten years ago from the Conservatoire of Damascus. Soon after she received a Chevening scholarship, which enabled her to study Music Education at Master’s level at UCL. In 2016, Arts Council England recognised her as a musician of ‘exceptional promise’, allowing her to work in the UK as a ‘Migrant Talent’.
Since then Rihab has performed as a soloist and with different groups such as the London Sinfonietta, Cantata Dramatica and The Third Orchestra. As a panellist, practitioner and social advocate she has been invovled in workshops hosted by Oxford, Cambridge, Westminster Universities, King’s College London, and V&A Museum. Rihab is also a keen promoter of children’s music education – she was Wigmore Hall’s Trainee Music Leader for 2022-2023.
Check in to YouTube to hear Rihab playing at the East Neuk Festival last year.
Khulood da’mi
Although Khulood has lived in the UK for over 30 years, her work is still very much centred in her home city of Baghdad. Working in print, paint, wood, perspex, textiles and ceramic she ‘fuses the key features of Islamic art and the distinctive characteristics of Arab culture – striving to illustrate the often subtle similarities that bind our faiths and cultures together by adapting the symbolic language of calligraphy’. The piece below, for example, is her free form sculpture of a poem by Al Sayyab.
Khulood has recently returned to Baghdad and is working there with a charity which teaches art and design technology to children displaced and traumatised by the years of conflict in their country. To raise money for them each year she holds a Christmas fair and exhibition at which she sells not only her bigger works but smaller pieces designed to make attractive – or useful – Christmas gifts. T-shirts, prints, small cuneiform tablets and hand printed scarves. Here she is working on some of her scarves with other designs shown below.
What is on offer on December 1st?
Khulood’s exhibition will open at 2pm on December 1st and run through until 5pm on Saturday 2nd. Anyone is welcome to come and browse at any time. Meanwhile…..
From 6pm on the 1st we will be offering glass of wine and some tasty Iraqi and Syrian nibbles ready for Rihab’s recital which will start at 6.30pm.
You will of course be very welcome to stay, have another glass of wine and browse Khulood’s work after the concert is over.
Book here for the concert – £15 to include wine and nibbles.
And don’t forget…….
Sunday 26th November – Highgate Society Sunday Lunchtime concert
Jazz duo – Shirley Smart – cello – and Peter Michaels – guitar
£15 to include the Bucks fizz – book here or pay on the door
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