BROOKLYN MAQAM x NY OUD FESTIVAL
May 8, 2025
Tomchess | Rachid Halihal
Tuesday, May 27th, 2025
7:30 doors | 8pm show
Sisters – 900 Fulton St, Brooklyn, NY 11238
$25 advance ($30 door)
Day 6 of the festival will feature sets by oudists Tomchess and Rachid Halihal. Seating is limited and first-come first-serve.
Rachid Halihal is a master oud player, rooted in rich traditions of North African and Mid-Eastern music. Born and trained in Morocco, he brings the soulful melodies and intricate techniques of the oud to life, playing Andalus, classical Arabic, and folk styles.
Rachid has played at the Kennedy Center as well as the United Nations, MoMA, Lincoln Center, Yale, and CUNY, and various embassy events in Washington D.C. He had a teaching residency with San Francisco’s ZAWAYA Arabic cultural organization’s orchestra, and has performed at festivals throughout the US, Scandinavia, and Canada. Rachid’s audiences can expect a captivating experience of dynamic rhythms and enchanting sounds of one of the world’s most revered instruments, the oud.
Tomchess is a Pittsburgh/NYC based multi-instrumentalist, improviser, and composer who has played and recorded with some of the most esteemed players in the improvisational and Jazz scene (Dewey Redman, Butch Morris, Pharoah Sanders, Drew Gress, Ronald Shannon Jackson), as well as Moroccan Sintarist Hassan Hakmoun. Having deeply studied the Near Eastern and North African traditions, his syncretic sound encompasses the tonal palette, rhythms, and forms of these traditional musics as well as focusing on the transcendent unity of all human culture and the importance and freedom of improvisation. He has performed in Africa, Canada, Europe, Turkey, and India. He has performed at Lincoln Center, The David Rubinstein Atrium, The United Nations among countless other venues in the United States. He has performed on NPR and PBS and played on Grammy Nominated recordings. He has been awarded grants from the Turkish American Society and The Maryland Council For The Arts. He has been nominated for an Independent Music Award. Tomchess embraces the idea that improvised musics promote collective and individual development, spontaneously creating common languages that alter perceptions and encourage us to imagine different alternatives in music and life, working towards creating a more beautiful world for all.
ASSEMBLY NO. 28
SAM WEINBERG TRIO + MY TRIO
April 28, 2025
JAMES ARENAS Y LOS SUCIOS + LAS MELINAS
HEAVY FLORALS
Tangie Mitchell, Chase Elodia, Alana Amore
April 11, 2025
ASSEMBLY No. 27
April 9, 2025
Monthly series curated by Lester St. Louis and Luke Stewart
BnoiSe and ClaRR
April 7, 2025
BnoiSe and ClaRR
ElectroJazz
Started in 2019, the collaboration between the electro producer BnoiSe (« Famille Electro Carcassonne ») and the jazz flutist ClaRR gave birth to one of the most requested electro duos in the region ! They count about fifty live performances realized so far in different contexts (festivals / bars / restaurants / private parties /
events / galleries / …). At the borders of funk, soul, hip-Hop with strongly jazz colors, the richness and groove of BnoiSe’s compositions offer an ideal playground for the creativity and virtuosity of the flutist… The result : a complicity and a complementarity for a suave, subtle and melodic groove !
Their first LP « Deux » comes out in April (8 tracks on Vinyl) and 6others on streaming.
BnoiSe (Benoît Négrail)
He is passionate about electronic music in the 90s and it is with the artist Crapo Montana that he produces his first live techno. He meets the DJ Didier Sinclair with whom he composes some EPs. In the 2000s he joined the Famille Electro collective and signed two albums on this label « OrganiZm » in 2012 and « HoriZon » in 2019.
ClaRR (Marc Cillaire)
Son of a jazz saxophonist, he chose the flute – or the flute chose him – at the age of 10! With his strongly jazzy playing and a remarkable technique, he counts a significant number of collaborations with Brazilian music groups, funk, fusion, jazz …
LINDA EPO
$20
F E A T U R I N G:
@alicynyaffee on guitar
@aleccastromusic on keys
@reinaldotumbando on percussion
@booduh_gundhi on drums
@mattgilmartin on bass