Anyone who loves music knows that it always wanders. That it mingles in an informal way. That its luster and innovation were developed by travelers over thousands of years. One may have legitimate doubts about the success of mankind – good music has always succeeded. No pain in the world has ever been too great to stop its healing power.
When you meet Maged Kildan, two impressions resonate in particular. His affection for people and his love for music occupy the room. And of course both are interwoven. Despite all the hardship of the life that lives him, he has retained these characteristics. This master of the Arabic lute called Oud came to Germany from Iraq in 1995. Under conditions that you don’t want anyone else. An escape that had to plunge his family into disaster, because his family belongs to the persecuted Mandaean minority. It was sanctioned even more severely in Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. Because he wanted to rescue her from the country with a smuggler, Maged Kildan even ended up in a German prison for three months. All that was a long time ago and meanwhile fate has turned. Atrocities that only human beings can dream up turn into music. And only humans can think of them.
After successful concerts with Iraqi classical music in Munich’s Gasteig, Kildan and the Münchner Kammerspiele break new ground in coproduction. Together with his son Kildan Maged, Maged Kildan designs music that merges east and west. Music that makes the path to creation tangible. Maged Kildan & Friends create an open musical system, somewhere between Arabic classical music, jazz and flamenco and do what music does best: build bridges. Music that brings community to life instead of just conjuring it up. The son with the confusable name plays Kanun, a box zither that is used in the art music of the so-called Middle East. If you add the Andalusian guitar by Luis Martín Navajas, the cello by Robert Eibl, Daniel Mark Eberhard on the piano, the distinguished clarinetist and saxophonist Alexander van Hagke, Murat Çakmaz on the Anatolian flutes Ney and Duduk in front of your inner ear – then the result is fabulous New. But there is still the Syrian master violinist Yanal Abaza on stage. Hadi Andywi from the Old Damascus Duo plays the darbuka, the single-headed beaker drum from the Middle East and Arabian North Africa. Right in the middle of it all is the drummer of the Spider Murphy Gang: Andreas Keller! Tommi Müller on bass, Lefteris Armyas on guitar, Christopher Herrman and Ahmed Hajji on cello and Yazan Al Sabbagh on clarinet join this inexorably growing ensemble a few weeks before the concert. The great Evelyn Huber transcends its sound on the harp.
When Maged Kildan & Friends play, musical perspectives amalgamate. We can only hear what for this evening. One thing is certain: you can’t want to miss this.
www.kildanmusic.com
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