Brooklyn Maqam Presents Layth Sidiq

Saturday July 26th, 2020 1pm https://www.viewcy.com/e/brooklyn_maqam_stream Tickets FREE (but donations highly encouraged!)

Layth Sidiq is an award-winning violinist, composer and educator who has toured the world and performed with major artists such as Simon Shaheen, Danilo Perez, Javier Limon, Jack Dejohnette, Tigran Hamasyan and others and performed in venues like the London Jazz Festival, Boston Symphony Hall, WOMEX Expo, Montreal Jazz Festival, Carnegie Hall and more. Layth is featured on multiple award-winning albums and his first record Son of Tigris was premiered at the Montreal Jazz Festival in 2016.

A Jordanian with Iraqi roots and a son of musical parents, Layth started his musical training at the National Music Conservatory in Amman with Timur Ibrahimov, and at only eleven years old, he had his first major solo performance with the European Chamber String Orchestra in front of Jordanian royalty. Layth finished his high school degree at the prestigious Chethams School of Music in Manchester, UK, and after getting accepted at the famous Berklee College of Music in Boston with a full scholarship, he traveled to the United States to finish his bachelor degree in performance in 2014 and finally his masters degree from the Berklee Global Jazz Institute in 2016. In 2018, Layth was one of the prize winners at the Zbigniew Seifert International Jazz Violin Competition as the first and only Arab to ever participate. He presented his compositions which are an amalgam of Eastern and Western styles done in a way which perfectly describe his diverse upbringing and musical taste.

In 2019, Layth, in collaboration with Carnatic vocalist Rohith Jayaraman, released a new EP titled ‘Hamsa’, which brought together the gigantic worlds of Arabic and Carnatic music. Combined with years of friendships and grounded-roots, this EP showcases a new sound for both musics, with one hand in the past and the other in the future. Layth’s core belief that music education is one of the most valuable tools artists can posses to make positive change in their communities has led him to collaborate with the Kayany Foundation in Lebanon. The Kayany Foundation has nine schools that host Syrian refugee students and provides them with the necessary education for them to become active members in society. Layth visited two of these schools in 2019 and gave workshops and masterclasses with the support of Friends of Kayany, Tufts University and Berklee College of Music.

Layth is currently the director of both the Arab Music Ensemble at Tufts University and the Center for Arabic Culture’s Youth Orchestra Program in Boston, and plays a leading role in Danilo Perez’s Global Messengers sextet. He is an in-demand violinist and vocalist around the world.