{"id":303,"date":"2011-08-30T12:00:55","date_gmt":"2011-08-30T12:00:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/openhandsinitiative.org\/blog\/?p=303"},"modified":"2012-02-22T20:54:55","modified_gmt":"2012-02-22T20:54:55","slug":"an-american-music-producer-in-syria-part-4-east-meets-west","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.openhandsinitiative.org\/blog\/an-american-music-producer-in-syria-part-4-east-meets-west\/","title":{"rendered":"An American Music Producer in Syria, Part 4: East Meets West"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>This guest blog post is the last of a four-part series written by Open Hands partner and music producer, Brian Unger. Read <a href=\"http:\/\/openhandsinitiative.org\/blog\/?p=284\" target=\"_blank\">Part 1<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/openhandsinitiative.org\/blog\/?p=299\" target=\"_blank\">Part 2<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/openhandsinitiative.org\/blog\/?p=301\" target=\"_blank\">Part 3<\/a> or learn more about the <a title=\"Music Exchange\" href=\"http:\/\/openhandsinitiative.org\/musicExchange\/syria_music_exchange.html\" target=\"_blank\">2010 Syrian Music Exchange<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>My last session for the day was <a href=\"http:\/\/www.maiasalyamani.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">Maias Alyamani<\/a> and his  quintet <a href=\"http:\/\/maqamensemble.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">MAqam<\/a>. The players are Maias Alyamani and Maria  Arnaout on violin, Osama Tesinni playing cello, Basem Aljaber on double bass and Georg Oro playing  percussion.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/openhandsinitiative.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/03\/MAqam-on-stage.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-349 aligncenter\" title=\"MAqam on stage\" src=\"http:\/\/openhandsinitiative.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/03\/MAqam-on-stage-300x197.jpg\" alt=\"MAqam on stage\" width=\"300\" height=\"197\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.openhandsinitiative.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/03\/MAqam-on-stage-300x197.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.openhandsinitiative.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/03\/MAqam-on-stage.jpg 539w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>As one might imagine from the instrumentation, this session  would undoubtedly lend itself to some comparisons to western classical music. In  fact, Maias is known for his East meets West philosophy in adapting traditional  pieces for modern interpretation and audiences. Again I would be somewhat  limited in my abilities to capture this group the way I would normally like to,  but I made the best of the situation. The Rhode stereo mike would capture the  overall left right perspective and percussion while emphasizing the two violins  up front. The double bass and cello would get individual close mikes giving me  good control there.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/openhandsinitiative.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/03\/MAqam-on-stage2.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-medium wp-image-350\" title=\"MAqam on stage2\" src=\"http:\/\/openhandsinitiative.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/03\/MAqam-on-stage2-300x168.jpg\" alt=\"MAqam on stage\" width=\"300\" height=\"168\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.openhandsinitiative.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/03\/MAqam-on-stage2-300x168.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.openhandsinitiative.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/03\/MAqam-on-stage2.jpg 599w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Strains of gypsy melodies marked the first composition  entitled \u201cSeawaves\u201d. These break into an allegro section of very dramatic  Beethoven-esque pulsed strings. The second piece entitled Longa Nahawand, is  another gypsy melody laced example of this genre. Here the word Nahawand refers  to another of the previously discussed Arabic Maqamat (scales).<\/p>\n<p>So ends day one of recordings in Damascus,  Syria.<\/p>\n<p>To hear the music produced during the exchange, please visit our <a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=WUpGZjhUx78\" target=\"_blank\">YouTube channel<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This guest blog post is the last of a four-part series written by Open Hands partner and music producer, Brian Unger. Read Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3 or learn more about the 2010 Syrian Music Exchange. My last session for the day was Maias Alyamani and his quintet MAqam. The players are Maias [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[27,62,32],"class_list":["post-303","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-syria","tag-brian-unger","tag-maias-alyamani","tag-maqam"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.openhandsinitiative.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/303","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.openhandsinitiative.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.openhandsinitiative.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.openhandsinitiative.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.openhandsinitiative.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=303"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.openhandsinitiative.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/303\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":580,"href":"https:\/\/www.openhandsinitiative.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/303\/revisions\/580"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.openhandsinitiative.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=303"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.openhandsinitiative.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=303"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.openhandsinitiative.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=303"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}