Mohamed Abozekry & Karkadé presented by Center Stage
September 21 @ 8:00 pm - 10:00 pm
$21 – $25
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Mohamed Abozekry
has that rare gift of combining limitless virtuosity with an unbridled imagination. An oud master still in his mid-twenties. Abozerky’s ambitions – to musically interpret the world around him and de-exoticize his instrument – mark him as a polymath of forms. “I never move backwards, but in a circular motion and return to the place I started with more experience.”
With Karkadé, Abozekry evokes the hibiscus tea found everywhere in Cairo. Also the eponymous French café at which this project was born. He convenes Egypt’s popular and classical music traditions, her Sufi calls, and secular poetry, to musically describe a path to an Arab world at peace with its history and turned towards the future.

Abozekry and Karkadé
will be touring as part of Center Stage 2018. For its fourth edition, Center Stage – a cultural exchange program initiated by the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs and produced by the New England Foundation for the Arts (NEFA) – will bring five contemporary music and theater ensembles from Egypt and Ukraine to tour in the United States in September-November 2018. During independent month-long tours:

Dina El Wedidi (Egypt),
Kurbasy (Ukraine),
Mohamed Abozekry and Karkadé (Egypt),
Teatr-Pralnia with CCA Dakh (Ukraine),
and Youssra El Hawary (Egypt)
will present more than 50 performances and hundreds of residency activities, classroom visits, workshops, artist-to-artist exchange, and community gatherings.

The 2018 Center Stage ensembles will visit and engage with people in 16 states and the District of Columbia. The artists will perform in a wide range of locations and venues, from large cities to small towns. Venues will include major performing arts centers such as the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC as well as universities, cultural and community centers, festivals, contemporary art venues, music clubs, and artist-run spaces. The program will bring one independent journalist from both Egypt and Ukraine to travel to the United States to report on the tours.