Spotlight: Kinan Azmeh
Hailed as a “virtuoso, intensely soulful" by the New York Times and "spellbinding" by the New Yorker. Syrian-born, Brooklyn-based genre-bending composer and clarinetist Kinan Azmeh has been touring the globe with great acclaim as a soloist, composer and improviser. He has collaborated with Yo-Yo Ma, Daniel Barenboim, John McLaughlin, Aynur and Djivan Gasparian, among others.
He leads his own bands Hewar and the Kinan Azmeh CityBand. He is a Silkroad ensemble artist with whom he won a Grammy in 2016. His recent orchestral album Uneven Sky with the Deutsches Symphony Orchestra Berlin has won Germany’s OpusKlassik Award in 2019.
Recent commissions include works for the Seattle Symphony, the New York Philharmonic the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, Brooklyn Rider, Aizuri Quartet and the Amsterdam Cello Octet.
He is a graduate of The Juilliard School, the Damascus High Institute of Music, and Damascus University’s School of Electrical Engineering, Kinan holds a doctorate in music from the City University of New York.He is currently working on his first opera, Songs For Days To Come which will be premiered in June 2022 by The Osnabruck Theater, Germany.
How did you decide to become a musician? What drew you to your instrument?
I think the decision happened organically, I have always loved many things, sports, math, music, nature, food, and physics. The choice became clearer after graduating from the Higher Institute of Music and the Faculty of Electrical engineering, both in Damascus, when I found myself applying to music schools for my graduate studies.
I started on the violin early on, and by age 7 it occurred to my parents that things were not going well because I am left handed. My father reached out to the Encyclopedia Britannica asking for advice, and they suggested that I might be better off switching to an even handed instrument. The two instruments that where taught in Damascus at the time and that fit that criteria were the piano and the clarinet, and I decided to choose the lighter one as I knew early on that a musician is supposed to travel.
When did you first work with Silkroad? And if you remember, what was the project?
I started playing with silkroad in 2012. I was invited to join in a performance of a new work by the wonderful composer David Bruce.
What is one of your favorite memories while working with Silkroad?
Too many to count here, it has been an endless stream of favorite moments, the US summer music festival tour in 2016 is certainly a highlight.
How has the pandemic affected you as an artist?
The personal eclipsed the professional, I believe it affected me as a human more so than an artist. In addition to worrying about loved ones and the world at large, Covid-19 allowed me to pay closer attention to my immediate surroundings. After living in New York for 20 years, it was the first time that I paid close attention to the soil (and soul) of the city in my backyard in Brooklyn. I connected with neighbors, planted a weeping Japanese cherry tree, grew vegetables and noticed the different seasons.
From a more practical perspective, I usually split my time between composing and performing, and this past year allowed me to focus more on composition.
What kind of projects have you been working on and what can we expect in the coming months or year?
I am now working on my first opera, Songs For Days To Come will be premiered in Osnabruck, Germany in June 2022. I have been working on this project which began as a song cycle for 6 years. This project is very personal to me as it is inspired by the Syria I love to be, and it is a collaboration with fifteen Syrian poet-friends who have written incredible poems in the past 11 years.
What are you listening to these days?
I am listening attentively to the different wonderful sounds that my baby is producing daily, it is incredible how humans are able to communicate even at that early stage.
What advice would you give to a young musician who has now read through all of these questions?
Be honest, adventurous, fearless and trust your guts and heart. If you want to go on a unique musical path, you will have to carved it out yourself. Also, if you are an instrumentalist: COMPOSE! I strongly believe that when you write your own music it will deepen your love and understanding of the music that is written by others.