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Tarek Yamani

Born and raised in Beirut, Tarek is an American-Lebanese New York based self-taught jazz pianist who has been dedicated to exploring relationships between African-American Jazz and Arabic rhythms/maqams which are most evident in his second album "Lisan Al Tarab: Jazz Conceptions in Classical Arabic", and in his newly released “Peninsular” which fuses jazz with the rhythms of the Arabian Peninsula. Winner of the prestigious Thelonious Monk Jazz Composers Competition, Tarek has been fortunate to share the stage with luminaries such as Wayne Shorter, Richard Bona, Zakir Hussein, Esperanza Spalding, and Antonio Sanchez during the inaugural and the sixth editions of the International Jazz Day, at the UN Assembly Hall in New York and the Teatro de la Habana, Cuba, respectively.

Awards

Tarek is the recipient of many awards such as the Givanas Foundation grant, the Huygens scholarship, the Andrea Elkenbracht award, the Abu Dhabi Festival Composers Commission, the Prins Bernhard Culture fund, the Thelonious Monk Composers Competition prize, the Betty Carter Jazz Ahead residency, the New Dutch composition contest, and recently the Baryshnikov Arts Center artist- in-residence program.


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Take Five With...

Take Five with Tarek Yamani

Read "Take Five with Tarek Yamani" reviewed by Tarek Yamani


About Tarek Yamani Born and raised in Beirut, Tarek is an American-Lebanese New York based self-taught jazz pianist who has been dedicated to exploring relationships between African-American Jazz and Arabic rhythms/maqams which are most evident in his second album Lisan Al Tarab: Jazz Conceptions in Classical Arabic, and in his newly released Peninsular which fuses jazz with the rhythms of the Arabian Peninsula. Winner of the prestigious Thelonious Monk Jazz Composers Competition, Tarek has been fortunate ...

8
Album Review

Tarek Yamani: Peninsular

Read "Peninsular" reviewed by Hrayr Attarian


On his third release Peninsular, pianist and composer Tarek Yamani continues to explore the amalgamation of Arabic music and American jazz. His work is more than a simple juxtaposition of disparate styles as it is built upon shared elements in both genres. On the current album, commissioned for the Abou Dhabi festival, Yamani's focus is folk tradition of the countries on the Arab peninsula that border the Persian Gulf. The melancholic “Gates of Tears" opens on a somber ...

8
Album Review

Tarek Yamani: Lisan Al Tarab

Read "Lisan Al Tarab" reviewed by Hrayr Attarian


Pianist Tarek Yamani's second release Lisãn Al Tarab is a sublime and innovative exploration of the common ground between Jazz and Arabic musical heritage. The title loosely translates as “Language of the Music" although there is no equivalent word to tarab in English. Tarab is the unique concept of music fused with its ecstatic, emotional impact, and has become synonymous with classical Arab song. Enough of crude attempts at linguistics and on to Yamani's album, which is not ...

4
Album Review

Tarek Yamani Trio: Ashur

Read "Ashur" reviewed by Jerry D'Souza


Accolades often disappear in the mists of time but Tarek Yamani who won the Thelonious Monk International Jazz Composer's Award 2010, for “Sama'i Yamani," stamps his credentials in no uncertain terms on Ashur. Born in Lebanon, he is a self-taught pianist who found his groove in several styles including hip-hop, Afro-Cuban and flamenco music. He began concentrating on jazz in 2004 and has gone on to make his mark in the genre. When the inaugural International Jazz Day was proclaimed ...

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Recording

Lebanese Pianist Tarek Yamani Drops Electro-Arabic-Jazz Mash-Up Single In Tribute To Buzuq Maestro Matar Muhammad

Lebanese Pianist Tarek Yamani Drops Electro-Arabic-Jazz Mash-Up Single In Tribute To Buzuq Maestro Matar Muhammad

Source: All About Jazz

Tarek Yamani—a pianist who appears to have made it his life's work to figure out just how far Arabic musical traditions can be thrust into the American jazz idiom—has unleashed perhaps his most audacious project yet. Typically an acoustic player most often fronting a trio, Yamani makes a brave about face with “King Matar," a quarter-tonal jazz/electro tribute to the virtuoso Lebanese/Syrian buzuq player Matar Muhammad (1939-1995), who lived most of his life in the pianist's homeland, Lebanon. The result ...

“Inspired by the common black roots of Khaleeji music and jazz, weaves refined cadences.” — La Libération

“Trailblazing pianist transforms Khaleeji music.” — CNN

“Tarek Yamani, a piano in each hand.” — Nayla Rached - L'Agenda Culturel

“Your talents as a jazz composer will ensure the vitality of the next generation of jazz composers.” — Tom Carter - President of Monk Insitute of Jazz

“Yamani’s resonant chords echo hauntingly in a provocative improvisation with a touch of thrilling angularity.” — Hrayr Attarian - All About Jazz

“Innovative jazz pianist from Beirut who is reinvigorating the genre.” — Shirine Saad - The National

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Photos

Concerts

Apr 10 Wed

Music

Recordings: As Leader | As Sideperson

King Matar

Self Produced
2021

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Peninsular

Edict Records
2017

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Lisan Al Tarab

Edict Records
2014

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Ashur

Edict Records
2012

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Videos

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