{"id":2956,"date":"2013-12-06T16:31:06","date_gmt":"2013-12-06T16:31:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.artinfo.com\/blunotes\/?p=2956"},"modified":"2013-12-06T16:31:06","modified_gmt":"2013-12-06T16:31:06","slug":"iran-meets-syria-via-china-in-new-york","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/larryblumenfeld.com\/index.php\/2013\/12\/06\/iran-meets-syria-via-china-in-new-york\/","title":{"rendered":"Iran Meets Syria Via China in New York"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><figure id=\"attachment_2957\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-2957\" style=\"width: 640px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a rel=\"attachment wp-att-2957\" href=\"http:\/\/blogs.artinfo.com\/blunotes\/2013\/12\/iran-meets-syria-via-china-in-new-york\/soundtheencounter_promo1\/\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-full wp-image-2957\" title=\"soundtheencounter_promo1\" src=\"http:\/\/blogs.artinfo.com\/blunotes\/files\/2013\/12\/soundtheencounter_promo1.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"640\" height=\"380\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-2957\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">&quot;Sound: The Encounter&quot;: (l-r) Basel Rajoub, Saeid Shanbehzadeh, and Naghib Shanbehzadeh<\/figcaption><\/figure><br \/>\nWhen saxophonist\u00a0<strong>Basel Rajoub<\/strong> was a boy in Aleppo, Syria, he wasn\u2019t much interested in the Middle Eastern classical music surrounding him, yet he found his ears drawn to the panoply of sounds within Aleppo\u2019s rich cultural blend. The stuff that grabbed his ears most, though, were the American jazz recordings his aunt played him.\u00a0<strong>Miles Davis<\/strong> became a hero, and he picked up a trumpet.<br \/>\nHe found his most profound connection with an Iranian musician in, of all places, Shanghai, China. Before performing at a world music festival there, Rajoub was entranced by the music of another band, whose leader,\u00a0<strong>Saeid Shanbehzadeh<\/strong>, played the ney-anb\u0101n, an Iranian bagpipe. Rajoub didn\u2019t understand the lyrics, but the Iranian melodies sounded familiar.<br \/>\nTheir subsequent collaboration has flowered into \u201cSound: The Encounter,\u201d an ensemble that will make its\u00a0<a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http:\/\/asiasociety.org\/new-york\/events\/sound-encounter-new-music-iran-and-syria\" target=\"_blank\">New York debut<\/a> December 7 at the Asia Society\u2019s Lila Acheson Wallace Auditorium in Manhattan. (Read my full story and interview <a href=\"http:\/\/www.blouinartinfo.com\/news\/story\/992411\/new-musical-union-rekindles-ancient-connection\">here.<\/a>)<br \/>\n<em>Photo: Courtesy of Asia Society<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When saxophonist\u00a0Basel Rajoub was a boy in Aleppo, Syria, he wasn\u2019t much interested in the Middle Eastern classical music surrounding him, yet he found his ears drawn to the panoply of sounds within Aleppo\u2019s rich cultural blend. The stuff that grabbed his ears most, though, were the American jazz recordings his aunt played him.\u00a0Miles Davis &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"http:\/\/larryblumenfeld.com\/index.php\/2013\/12\/06\/iran-meets-syria-via-china-in-new-york\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Iran Meets Syria Via China in New York&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2957,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[17,18,19,20],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/larryblumenfeld.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2956"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/larryblumenfeld.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/larryblumenfeld.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/larryblumenfeld.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/larryblumenfeld.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2956"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/larryblumenfeld.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2956\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/larryblumenfeld.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/larryblumenfeld.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2956"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/larryblumenfeld.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2956"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/larryblumenfeld.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2956"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}