Mediterranean Meditations

Date: Sat, February 18th 2012
Additional Time Info: 8:00 p.m.
External Link: Event Website
Location: The Rialto Center for the Arts

Yasmin Levy preserves and revives the most beautiful and romantic songs from the Ladino/Judeo-Spanish cultures.  Virtuoso multi-instrumentalist Omar Faruk Tekbilek from Turkey plays various Middle Eastern wind instruments (the Ney flute, the Zurna, and the Baglama).  Combining each artist's respective musical influences, this will be a world music performance you don’t want to miss.  Levy and Faruk will collaborate on several of each other’s compositions.  Yasmin Levy traces her routes to Turkey where her father, the renowned musicologist and cantor Yitzhak Levy, was born in Manissa.  Her father’s family traces his roots back further to the expulsion of Jews from Spain during the Inquisition.  Omar Faruk Tekbilek was born in Adana, Turkey, but moved to Istanbul at a young age.  Levy makes her home in Israel where she was born.  This exploration of their respective roots will be a truly once in a lifetime experience.