If you haven’t bought the DVD yet, don’t forget to buy the DVD before March 14th if you would like to try to win the Emin Drum! You can read testimonials about the DVD here.

I was fortunate to spend 10 days in February working with the Middle Eastern ensemble in Williamsberg, Virginia, which is lead by professor Anne Rasmussen. Ms. Rasmussen is a great scholar and musician at William and Mary college. Also it was a great furtune to teach along side Sami Abu Shumays. We both had a great teaching and learning experience. It felt to me that the serious work is starting and there is so much to work on and a lot of music to play.

I will be teaching three workshops with dancer Samar Naser, in Berkeley Ca. for three Sundays in March. This is the second time I will co-teach a drumming workshop for dancers with Samar. We decided to do it again and the series is a 4 weekend workshop, I will be teaching the last three. I will be covering a few subjects that touch on immediate needs for dancers in learning about Arabic and Turkish beats. You can check out Samar’s website here.

In April, I will be on a tour with the Qadim ensemble on the east coast. This will be our first tour together in the east and it will include NYC, Boston, Yale and maybe 2 more places. Eliyahu and Rachel just returned from a 4 months trip to Morocco and now we are back to start the group again, hoping to refresh and advance our work as a group and refine our music. The tour will be from April 1st. till the 9th. and then I will be spending few more days in NYC working with Sami on more music projects. You can check out the detailed schedule for the Qadim tour in the east coast at qadimmusic.com

I would like also to mention my involvement with the world music and dance school Zambaleta, in San Francisco. This school is newly opened and we are hoping it will grow to attract more people and become an established school
for music and dance. I will be teaching my third session at Zambaleta and I invite you to check it out and see if you are interested in enrolling as a student or if you’d like to be involved in the school in other ways. You can also check their website zambaleta.org for listings of classes and mission statement.

Our newly founded group Ajyal is getting more ready through rehearsals and study of the music. We are also recruiting musicians to play few different instruments like Nay, upright bass and violin. We are hoping to reach the
amount of musicians that is required to express the music that we like to perform. If you are around San Francisco on Monday night , you are welcome to check our rehearsal between 5 and 9pm at Zambaleta music school.