Egypt: Mother of the World! Riad Abdel-Gawad's NEW CD to be Released September 21, 2010

posted on: Aug 13, 2010

Riad Abdel-Gawad’s new CD, Egypt: Mother of the World! will be released on September 21, 2010 and is available for pre-order on Amazon.

Riad Abdel-Gawad composes music and performs on the violin, which, although does not fit easily into any “box” or genre, points towards likely frontiers that music has taken and will take in the 21st-century.

Having composed in three very distinct styles of composition — “contemporary and avant-garde”, “polystylistic postmodern”, and “international authentic world”, his music crosses and fuses a variety of Western and Eastern genres and canons. Having immersed himself for over a decade in a unique guru-based artistic school in Cairo, Mr. Abdel-Gawad is considered by his peers in Egypt to be one of the main protagonists and one of the most serious artists to come out of this particularly distinct school of musical style.

This unique Arab music school was developed by Abdo Dagher, legendary violin accompanier to Egyptian singer Oum Kalsoum, the “Incomparable Voice” so-named by Maria Callas. Riad Abdel-Gawad links and preserves a tradition whose roots reach to the Medieval Arabic writers’ and practitioners’ old sources. This school, is the only such teacher-disciple school to develop in recent (c. 100 years) documented Cairo history. Baghdad experienced the development of a similar unique stylistic school, (of Mouneer Basheer) c. 30-40 years ago that focused on `oud—”lute” performance. This Iraqi school now has a small number of renowned second-generation performing artists (e.g. Nasheer Shama, Adel Sallameh). Born in Cairo, Egypt, Riad Abdel-Gawad is a graduate of the University of Southern California, the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music and Harvard University. He studied with Bernard Rands at Harvard where he earned a Ph.D. in music. Mr. Abdel-Gawad also spent one year of study with Frederic Rzewski at the Conservatoire Royal de Liège in Belgium.

Thus, Mr. Abdel-Gawad’s current “postmodern” and “authentic” compositional styles cross-fertilize — mutually from the “East” and the “West” — musical techniques and forms.

Presently his music is currently being programmed and listened to on US, Canadian and European radio programs that spin such so-called musical genres as “new age meditative/world beat” and tarab—“enchantment”.

For more information go to:
www.riadabdelgawad.com