Paris, France, 24 October 2023 - On 18 October, the Aga Khan Master Musicians (AKMM), the resident performing ensemble of the Aga Khan Music Programme, awed a distinguished audience with a demonstration of how Muslim cultural heritage can serve as a rich and inspiring resource for cutting edge musical innovation. Performing in a sold-out concert organised by l’Institut du Monde Arabe, whose mission is to cultivate intercultural dialogue between Europe and the Arab world, the five members of AKMM showcased their own compositions, improvisations and arrangements, many of them featured on the group’s just-released debut recording, Nowruz, produced by the Aga Khan Music Programme in partnership with Smithsonian Folkways Recordings.

Founded by the Music Programme in 2013, AKMM draws on music from regions once linked by the trans-Eurasian trade routes popularly known as the Silk Road to create a strikingly original body of work where living musical traditions meet and meld. Speaking at a post-concert reception, Prince Amyn Aga Khan complimented the artists, noting that “While the musical traditions of North Africa, the Middle East and Central Asia overlap in significant ways, they are also quite different. Creating new music in which these different worlds meet harmoniously and without resorting to cliché is an admirable achievement”.

The concert was introduced by Luis Monreal, General Manager of the Aga Khan Trust for Culture, the cultural agency of the Aga Khan Development Network. Speaking in French, Mr Monreal underscored music’s ability to illuminate the “plurality of the societies in which it exists and the diversity of religious convictions and ethnic origins of the musicians who created it”. The President of l’Institut du Monde Arabe, Jack Lang, who served as France’s Minister of Culture and Minister of National Education, amongst other senior government positions, praised the work of the Aga Khan Trust for Culture and the “extraordinary generosity with which it has supported living music heritage in societies throughout the world”.

Amplifying Prince Amyn’s comments, Fairouz Nishanova, Director of the Aga Khan Music Programme, clarified that “AKMM is not a fixed group but rather a collective consisting of the most accomplished performers and teachers the Music Programme has collaborated with over the last two decades”. These performers, whose individual musical journeys have criss-crossed countries and continents, represent a contemporary version of the Silk Road.

AKMM artists who performed at l’Institut du Monde Arabe, which titled its concert “Music of the Silk Road and its Global Impact”, included Basel Rajoub (saxophone and duclar), Feras Charestan (qanun), Jasser Haj Youssef (viola d’amore), Basma Jabr (vocal) and Abbos Kosimov (percussion).

Guests at the concert included the Ismaili Imamat’s Official Representative to France Shamir Samdjee, President of the Ismaili Council for France Aiaze Mitha, and other leaders from the community and the Aga Khan Development Network as well as representatives from the diplomatic corps, national and local government authorities, and leaders of French civil society.