TEHRAN – Several overseas musicians from across the globe will give performances at the 37th edition of the Fajr Music Festival opening in Tehran on Friday.

Najmeddin, an Afghan qawwali group, will perform at the Arasbaran Cultural Center on Friday. The band features Javad Tabesh, Asef Habibi, Abdolqader Azizi, Abdolkhaleq Azizi, Gholamsakhi Rasuli, Hushang Javid and Nematollah Hosseinzadeh. 

Qawwali is a form of Muslim Sufi musical performance. 

Egyptian oud virtuoso Mohamed Abozekry and Macedonian percussionist Ersoj Kazimov will give a duet at the Niavaran Cultural Center on Sunday.

Abozekry is the leader of Mohamed Abozekry & Heejaz, a Franco-Egyptian quartet of instrumental music formed in 2010.

On the same day, the Niavaran center will host Nicolas van Poucke, a promising Dutch pianist who is the winner of the first prizes and audience awards on both the Steinway Int. Piano Competition 2006 and the Princess Christina Competition 2006. He also won a prize for the best interpretation of a work by J.S. Bach at the European Union Piano Competition 2009.  

Italian jazz pianist Giovanni Guidi will perform at Vahdat Hall on February 14.

He is a well-known musician on the European scene as a bandleader and a frequent sideman for Italian trumpeter Enrico Rava.

“Today Giovanni Guidi, despite being still very young, is certainly one of the most interesting and original Italian pianists,” Rava has previously said.

“I, who know him well and have the pleasure of frequently playing with him, can say with absolute certainty that this is only the beginning of a story that I foresee being extraordinary,” he added.

Among his credits are the albums “Ojos De Gato”, “Avec Le Temps”, “Ida Lupino”, “This Is the Day”, “We Don’t Live Here Anymore”, “The Unknown Rebel Band”, “Indian Summer” and “Tomorrow Never Knows”.

The 37th Fajr Music Festival will be held totally in person amid the spread of the Omicron variant of the Coronavirus in the country.

“After a two-year hiatus, I would like the festival to provide an excuse for the musicians to dust off their instruments,” the secretary of the festival, Hassan Riahi, said last week.

According to the organizers, representatives of several foreign news agencies from Italy, Germany, Japan, Azerbaijan, Russia, China, Iraq and Lebanon will cover the festival.

Photo: A file photo shows Nicolas van Poucke, a Dutch pianist, who is scheduled to perform during the 37th Fajr Music Festival in Tehran.

MMS/YAW