Lamia Yared & Efrén López - music from the Arab world & medieval Iberia

Music from the Arab world & medieval Iberia, with Lebanese-born singer Lamia Yared & Spanish multi-instrumentalist Efrén López. Lebanese-born singer and oud player Lamia Yared joins acclaimed Spanish multi-instrumentalist Efrén López and Iraqi koza player Nawres Al-Freh for From Minho to Euphrates, a luminous musical journey through eight centuries of sacred and secular traditions. Drawing on Yared’s Syriac-Maronite heritage and her deep immersion in Arabic, Ottoman, Persian, and medieval repertoires, the program weaves together 4th-century Syriac hymns, Aleppine Muwashahāt, medieval Iberian song, Sufi poetry, and a rare 13th-century composition by Safi al-Din al-Urmawi, one of the great theorists of Middle Eastern music. Through López’s inventive modal arrangements, music from medieval Iberia is reimagined through the maqam system, revealing unexpected affinities between Galician-Portuguese devotion, Eastern Mediterranean ornamentation, and the living traditions of Arabic and Ottoman music. What emerges is not simply a historical reconstruction, but a contemporary dialogue across languages, faiths, and civilisations. Joining them is Nawres Alfreh - an Iraqi-born musician and one of the finest exponents of the Iraqi maqam tradition performing today. Born in Iraq, he studied at the renowned Baghdad Conservatory of Music, earning a degree in classical music, before leaving the country at eighteen to continue his studies in Jordan and then London. Along the way he had the opportunity to play alongside some of maqam's great names, including Naseer Shamma and Farida Mohammad Ali. This is a concert you won't want to miss. At once intimate, scholarly, and deeply expressive, From Minho to Euphrates invites listeners into a shared human story: one in which Christian hymns, Sufi poetry, courtly song, and ancient modal traditions continue to speak to one another across time. "★★★★. To say that this album explores medieval religious music from around the Mediterranean undersells it." – Songlines UK