CAIRO - If you would like to experience a new kind of music, then you ought to attend the concerts of the Cairo Contemporary Music Festival, which presents classical music in a non-traditional way for the first time in Egypt. The festival offers an interesting blend of contemporary Spanish music, as Spain is this year's guest of honour. The festival has been brought to Cairo by the Egyptian-European Contemporary Music Society (EECMS), in co-operation with the American University in Cairo, with the support of the Goethe Institute and under the auspices of the Egyptian Ministry of Culture/Foreign Cultural Relations and some foreign embassies in Egypt. The Neue Vocalsolisten (Stuttgart, Germany), Alex Garrobé (Spain), the Ensemble Slagwerk Den Haag (Holland) and the Conjunt Instrumental BCN216 (Barcelona, Spain) will perform a series of concerts during the festival, which runs till Tuesday and is dedicated to the martyrs who died in the recent revolution. “The festival is about contemporary music, which is the latest fashion and is very popular abroad,” Hossam Nassar, the First Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Cultural Relations, told The Egyptian Gazette in an interview. All the concerts are free of charge, to encourage people to enjoy and learn more about this contemporary music. “Our main aim is to offer Egyptians the chance to experience this new music, especially after the revolution,” Nassar added. Contemporary music means modernising classical music by using percussion and other modern instruments. Several new works by Egyptian and other regional composers, being commissioned and performed during the festival, are competing for awards to encourage high quality. The festival also features a celebration entitled ‘Arab Composer in Focus', and the Arab composer this year is Saeed Haddad from Jordan. All the concerts are being held in the Ewart Hall at the AUC downtown and on the university's New Cairo Campus, at 7pm. This evening and tomorrow evening will witness a concert entitled ‘Gardens of Writing', performed by the Chamber Opera GRAMMA and composed and conducted by José María Sánches-Verdú. The BCN216 Ensemble and the Neue Vocalsolisten will be performing in this concert.
