About the artists

Born in Karachi and now resident in Ontario, Canada, Tazeen Qayyum is an internationally recognised painter and visual artist whose work encompasses drawing, installation, sculpture, video and performance. She has been nominated for several prestigious art prizes – including the 2013 Jameel Prize and the 2014 KM Hunter Award – and she received the 2015 Excellence in Art Award from the Canadian Community Arts Initiative, as well as a UNESCO bursary in 2000 to work and study in Vienna. Elements including repetition, rhythm, balance and geometry blend in her visually complex works, which offer multi-layered understandings of the materials and techniques employed in their creation.

Virtuoso qanun player and composer Feras Charestan comes from the northeastern Syrian city of Al-Hasakeh, and currently resides in Stockholm, Sweden. He undertook his qanun studies in Damascus, and his work encompasses traditional music as well as popular and contemporary genres, including performing as a qanun soloist with symphony orchestras. He is one of the founding members of the Aga Khan Master Musicians.

Saxophonist, multi-instrumentalist, composer, improviser and teacher Basel Rajoub was born in Aleppo and now lives in Geneva. He is renowned as a pioneering interpreter of Middle Eastern music on the saxophone, and has created new music bringing together musicians from the Middle East, North Africa, Asia and Europe. He is also one of the founding members of the Aga Khan Master Musicians, a founder member of Soriana Project bringing together music and musicians from Syria and the West, and Artistic Director of the Oriental Ensemble at Geneva’s Haute École de Musique.

Aga Khan Music Programme

Founded in 2000, the Aga Khan Music Programme (AKMP) collaborates with traditional musicians and ensembles throughout Central Asia, the Middle East, North Africa, South Asia and West Africa. The AKMP celebrates music as an elemental expression of human spirituality, and a crucial means of fostering tolerance, curiosity and pluralism by connecting individuals and communities, and bringing musicians’ work to a global audience. While respecting and supporting communities’ often ancient traditions, the AKMP also encourages new projects from contemporary artists immersed in those rich heritages, producing music inspired by but not constrained by tradition.

The AKMP carries out its work through a network of music schools and development centres throughout the Middle East and Central Asia, in countries including Egypt, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan and Tajikistan. Their aims are to rethink the regions’ traditional master/apprentice learning model for our contemporary times, and to provide learning and performance opportunities for outstanding young musicians.

The AKMP’s Master Musicians form an ensemble of exceptional performers drawn from the top ranks of artists who have worked with the AKMP since its inception. The Master Musicians look beyond their individual traditions to exchange musical ideas and expertise in innovative performances, as well as passing on their skills as teachers, mentors and curators. Established in 2018, the Aga Khan Music Awards recognise exceptional creativity, promise and enterprise in music across the world.