Aga Khan Master Musicians with Vincent Peirani & Vincent Ségal

The artist collective of Aga Khan Master Musicians was formed through the Aga Khan Music Programme, a multi-faceted education, performance, production, commissioning, and awards platform that convenes leading artists from the Great East and Mediterranean worlds to explore what happens when long-travelled musical paths meet again in the present.

The members of Aga Khan Master Musicians and their special guests — collectively representing roots in Central Asia, China, the Middle East, and France — draw on both their cultural heritages and their personal experiences, including encounters with displacement and migration, to create a modern sound that resonates across continents and centuries. Here, the septet performs a fresh program of jointly created works inspired by the ancient routes that once connected trade and culture between Asia and the Mediterranean. The instrumentation itself embodies this spirit of cross-cultural dialogue: Feras Charestan on the qanun, a plucked string instrument of the Middle East; Abbos Kosimov on the doira, the traditional Uzbek frame drum; Wu Man on the pipa, a four-stringed plucked lute from China; Vincent Peirani on the accordion; Basel Rajoub on the saxophone and the duclar, a Middle Eastern wind instrument; Vincent Ségal on the cello; and Yurdal Tokcan on the oud, the lute-like plucked instrument emblematic of the Middle East.