Kinan Azmeh

Clarinetist and composer Kinan Azmeh has been hailed as “intensely soulful” and a “virtuoso” by The New York Times and “spellbinding” by The New Yorker. He has gained international recognition for what the CBC has called his “incredibly rich sound” and distinctive compositional voice across diverse musical genres.

 Originally from Damascus, Syria, Azmeh brings his music to all corners of the world as a soloist, composer, and improviser. Dawning, a double concerto for clarinet, violin, and orchestra co-composed with violinist Layale Chaker, was premiered in 2023 by co-commissioners, Nebraska Crossroads Music Festival, Lincoln’s Symphony Orchestra, and the New York Philharmonic with the composers as soloists.

 Azmeh has appeared as a soloist with many of the leading orchestras and conductors throughout the world. He has shared the stage with such musical luminaries as Yo-Yo Ma, Daniel Barenboim, Marcel Khalife, Aynur and Jivan Gasparian, John McLaughlin, and Francois Rabbath.

Azmeh’s compositions include works for solo, chamber, and orchestra, as well as music for film, live illustration, and electronics. His first opera Songs for Days to Come sung fully in Arabic, was premiered in Osnabruck, Germany in June 2022 to great acclaim. Recent works were commissioned by The Knights, Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, Elbphilharmonie, Brooklyn Rider, Aizuri Quartet, and theater director and visual artist Robert Wilson.

 An advocate for new music, several concertos and many chamber works have been dedicated to Azmeh by composers such as Kareem Roustom, Dia Succari, Dinuk Wijeratne, Zaid Jabri, Saad Haddad, and Guss Janssen. In 2019 he received Germany’s Klassik Opus Award for his double CD Uneven Sky.

 In addition to his own Arab-Jazz Quartet CityBand and the Hewar Trio, Azmeh has been playing with the Silkroad Ensemble since 2012 and featured as clarinetist and composer on their 2017 GRAMMY Award-winning album Sing Me Home.

 Kinan Azmeh is a graduate of The Juilliard School, where his teachers included clarinetist Charles Neidich, and earned his doctoral degree in music from the City University of New York. In his native Syria, he studied at Damascus High Institute of Music and Damascus University’s School of Electrical Engineering. Recently he was appointed to the National Council on the Arts by President Joe Biden.