Osnabrück Morgenland Festival

For many years the Osnabrück Morgenland Festival has celebrated the music of the Middle East, from traditional to the avant-garde, jazz and rock. After premiering at the festival, some productions are invited to the world’s most famous concert halls like the Carnegie Hall, the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, the Elbphilharmonie, the Kazakh State Philharmonic and opera houses in Berlin and Damascus. For the fifteenth edition of the festival “Morgenland15”, artistic director Michael Dreyer presented a programme based on his many years of expertise and experience with the music of western Asia. The fifteenth edition has featured new concert formats developed in collaboration with musicians from Azerbaijan, Turkey, Syria, Iran and other countries. Morgenland15 has invited outstanding soloists and ensembles of traditional music, e.g. Alim Qasimov, Moslem Rahal and Waed Bouhassoun. The programme included performances by the Syrian qanoon virtuosa Maya Youssef and the Iranian oud player Yasamin Shahhosseini, two highly successful female soloists who have pushed the limits of their instruments. A concert by the ensemble “Sound of Montreal” has presented musical and improvisational styles of Western experimental music in direct contrast to Iranian, Indian, Senegalese and Turkish music. The Morgenland All Star Band has given their very first performance together with the Osnabrück Symphony Orchestra, and the NDR Bigband has performed in concert with the Syrian clarinettist Kinan Azmeh. As part of the festival, the singers of the Osnabrück Youth Choir had been invited to give concerts in Almaty and Tashkent. Together with Kazakh and Uzbek music students, they have performed the oratorio “Yunus Emre” by the Turkish composer Ahmed Adnan Saygun.

Artistic director: Michael Dreyer
Artists: Saleem Ashkar (IL/PS), Kinan Azmeh (SY), Aynur (TR), Sandeep Bhagwati (DE/IN), Narek Hakhnazaryan (AM), Mohsen Namjoo (IR), NDR Bigband, Alim Qasimov (AZ), Taksim Trio (TR), Maya Youssef (SY) and others