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Jazz Articles about Tarek Yamani
Take Five with Tarek Yamani
by Tarek Yamani
About Tarek Yamani Born and raised in Beirut, Tarek is an American-Lebanese New York based self-taught jazz pianist who has been dedicated to exploring relationships between African-American Jazz and Arabic rhythms/maqams which are most evident in his second album Lisan Al Tarab: Jazz Conceptions in Classical Arabic, and in his newly released Peninsular which fuses jazz with the rhythms of the Arabian Peninsula. Winner of the prestigious Thelonious Monk Jazz Composers Competition, Tarek has been fortunate ...
read moreTarek Yamani: Peninsular
by Hrayr Attarian
On his third release Peninsular, pianist and composer Tarek Yamani continues to explore the amalgamation of Arabic music and American jazz. His work is more than a simple juxtaposition of disparate styles as it is built upon shared elements in both genres. On the current album, commissioned for the Abou Dhabi festival, Yamani's focus is folk tradition of the countries on the Arab peninsula that border the Persian Gulf. The melancholic Gates of Tears" opens on a somber ...
read moreTarek Yamani: Lisan Al Tarab
by Hrayr Attarian
Pianist Tarek Yamani's second release Lisãn Al Tarab is a sublime and innovative exploration of the common ground between Jazz and Arabic musical heritage. The title loosely translates as Language of the Music" although there is no equivalent word to tarab in English. Tarab is the unique concept of music fused with its ecstatic, emotional impact, and has become synonymous with classical Arab song. Enough of crude attempts at linguistics and on to Yamani's album, which is not ...
read moreTarek Yamani Trio: Ashur
by Jerry D'Souza
Accolades often disappear in the mists of time but Tarek Yamani who won the Thelonious Monk International Jazz Composer's Award 2010, for Sama'i Yamani," stamps his credentials in no uncertain terms on Ashur. Born in Lebanon, he is a self-taught pianist who found his groove in several styles including hip-hop, Afro-Cuban and flamenco music. He began concentrating on jazz in 2004 and has gone on to make his mark in the genre. When the inaugural International Jazz Day was proclaimed ...
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