Jubilee - a celebration of music

Honouring the 60th accession anniversary of His Highness the Aga Khan, Jubilee will feature Master Musicians of the Aga Khan Music Initiative with special guests Kronos Quartet  & Bassekou Kouyaté. 

Wednesday 20 June 2018, 8pm
Royal Albert Hall

A dazzling array of virtuosic musicians will take the stage at the Royal Albert Hall on Wednesday 20 June in an exceptional concert to honour the 60th anniversary of His Highness the Aga Khan’s accession to the leadership of the Shia Ismaili Muslims. Commemorating this Diamond Jubilee, the concert celebrates the diversity, richness and vitality of Muslim musical heritage and its contemporary expression.  

Produced by the Ismaili Centre London, Aga Khan Music Initiative (AKMI) and Serious, Jubilee will feature Master Musicians of the Aga Khan Music Initiative and special guests Kronos Quartet and Bassekou Kouyaté in a performance of newly-created compositions that exemplify the way musical creativity has historically developed from the meeting of different cultures.

The concert reflects the Aga Khan’s 60-year-long commitment to supporting pluralism and civil society and to providing the arts a prominent place in the work of the Aga Khan Development Network (AKDN), where cultural development programmes are closely integrated with social and economic development. 

Master Musicians of the Aga Khan Music Initiative include:

Homayoun Sakhi, an innovative master performer on the rubab, the long-necked lute that many Afghans consider their country’s national instrument

• Wu Man, a world-renowned virtuoso on the pipa, a four-stringed Chinese lute, who has done more than anyone to popularise the instrument in both the East and West
• Sirojiddin Juraev, a brilliant performer from a lineage of players of the dutar, tanbur and sato – long-necked lutes indigenous to his native region of northern Tajikistan
• Basel Rajoub, an award-winning saxophonist and composer-improviser from Syria, whose inspirations include Middle Eastern rhythms and jazz
• Saler Nader, a virtuoso tabla player who began studying under the legendary Ustad Zakir Hussain at the age of seven
• Feras Charestan, an accomplished and innovative performer on the qanun, a Middle Eastern zither
• Andrea Piccioni, a native of Rome and a master percussionist and performer on frame drums
• Abbos Kosimov, who comes from a famous musical family in Uzbekistan and is a master performer on the doira, an Uzbek tambourine

The first half of the concert features the Master Musicians of the Aga Khan Music Initiative and Kronos Quartet, the world-renowned collective who have been working with AKMI since 2008 and have commissioned more than 900 new and original works and arrangements for string quartet since their inception in 1973.

In the second half of the programme, the Master Musicians of the Aga Khan Music Initiative will be joined by a trio of Malian musicians led by the ngoni player Bassekou Kouyaté, a long-term AKMI collaborator, whose recording Segu Blue won Album of the Year & African Artist of the Year at the BBC Radio 3 Awards for World Music and received a Grammy nomination for the follow-up I Speak Fula.  The trio also includes Kouyaté’s wife Amy Sacko and daughter Oumou Kouyaté on vocals.

Produced by the Ismaili Centre London, Aga Khan Music Initiative, and Serious

To purchase tickets, click here.