Gordon Grdina’s Haram

10-piece powerhouse Arabic/avant-garde ensemble

Gordon Grdina’s Haram (BC)

“Arabic music, from Iraqi folk to Egyptian radio music, lovingly reinterpreted by Vancouver’s most creative musicians.”

Sometimes you turn a corner in your own home town and come upon the sounds of incredible world music in unexpected places. Gord Grdina’s Haram is a sterling example of this very thing. JUNO Award-winner and Canadian oudvirtuoso, Grdina leads a 10-piece powerhouse Arabic/avant-garde ensemble from our very own city that will knock your socks off!

Filtering Arabic music from great composers like Farid Al-Atrache and Oum Khalsoum through Vancouver’s creative improvisational music community, Haram’s music constantly shifts directions while building to euphoric crescendos.

“The music’s backbone is traditional, but wild outbursts of free improvisation and subtle injections of noise make it quite unlike anything you’d hear in the shisha dens of Cairo or Baghdad.” – Alex Varty, Georgia Straight.

This cross-cultural, boundary-annihilating music will appeal equally to lovers of world, folk, jazz, avant-garde and indie music – a brilliant mix of effortless cohesion and wild abandon.

Of the group’s gorgeous CD “Her Eyes Illuminate (2015), Vancouver Sun’s Stuart Derdeyn says, “This is one of the best releases of its kind to ever come out of Vancouver’s culture-blending music scene.”

The band is a local ‘super-group’ of outstanding musicians, many of whom have played the festival in the past – on their own and with other groups. Haram’s 10 members include: Gordon Grdina, Francois Houle, Jesse Zubot, JP Carter, and Kenton Loewen.

Come see us try to fit them all on one stage and be swept away by their sonic wonder.

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