Dubai, 21 January, 2022 – Expo 2020 Dubai will host the world premiere of Syrian Rhapsody, an epic musical concert by Syrian composer, songwriter and producer Iyad Rimawi, presenting a theatrical performance featuring more than 100 musicians and singers on the Jubilee Stage on 7 February.
The show will be conducted by the award-winning Syria musician and maestro Missak Baghboudarian, who has worked for nine months to combine his compositions with historical musical pieces to present Syrian Rhapsody, which spans 3,000 years of musical history. It begins with a rendition of Hymn to Nikkal, the world’s oldest known piece of musical notation, discovered on a clay tablet dating from approximately 1400 BCE in the Syrian city of Ugarit.
Iyad Rimawi said: “The Syrian Rhapsody is an artistic journey that aims to explore the essence of music, which makes it a truly global language. Expo 2020 Dubai is the world’s biggest event, and with a platform as such, we wanted to present something that the world had never heard before, and bring three millennia of Syrian and world music history together in one great musical show”.
The Syrian Rhapsody concert is part of the Syria Pavilion’s cultural programme at Expo 2020 Dubai, in cooperation with the Syria Trust for Development. The trust safeguards and promotes Syria’s cultural identity, and recently played a crucial role in the inclusion of Al-Qudoud Al-Halabiya on UNESCO’s List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.
