Workshops

2019-2020 I directed the Middle East Ensemble at SOAS, University of London, while leading workshops for festivals, schools and local groups, developing collective approaches to the musical traditions resonating inside but also across the borders of Greece, Turkey, Lebanon, Syria, and Egypt. These traditions are continuously mutating, adapting to new influences and contexts, voices and instruments as they travel.

In 2020, students taking the IGCSE in Music had a special focus on Arab music, and I was invited to the City of London School for Girls in 2019 to provide a workshop and presentation for students and teachers. During lockdown, and as part of the SOAS Summer School I led an experimental online course in modal creative work, 29 June to 3 July 2020. Later that year I launched Music Boat, with a team of Europe-based musicians hailing from Mexico, Germany, Egypt, Greece, Iran, Lebanon, Palestine, Spain and the UK, committed to innovative styles of music teaching, fostering new connections across the borders and distances that currently divide us. We promoted a collaborative approach, offering interactive workshops and courses that allowed participants to listen in new ways, and to make music through new forms of participation and shared experience. We understand music-making as a way of expanding our imagination and helping us move beyond our individual spheres, perhaps even entering the spheres of others.