Riad Abdel-Gawad
About Dr. Abdel-Gawad
Riad Abdel-Gawad is an American-raised, Egyptian-born, founder and Executive Director of Midan Elmusica (The Music Square), which exhibits to and informs the US public about “Arabic Music” from Egypt. Dr. Abdel-Gawad fulfilled his academic life by earning his PhD in music composition from Harvard University. He also studied with — expatriate American composer — Frederic Rzewski at the Liége Conservatory of Music. Yet he maintained and progressed with his professional life by earning his living as a street musician in France, Germany and Belgium. Honing his violin performing acumen, Riad — as a street musician — was able to cultivate his musical art in public at the Galeries Royales Saint-Hubert in Brussels, where nearby Roma musicians from Romania also used to earn their living (some of whom appeared in the 1993 documentary, Latcho Drom).
Dr. Riad traveled to African nations, including to the southeast of Cameroon in 2006, into the Equatorial Rain Forest, to perform in the 1st Story-Telling Festival in the village, Oyup; he also attended a masterclass with young composers from all over Africa in the Congo (DRC) in 2005. Additionally, his composition, Longa Nahawand, was published in Oxford University Press: Piano Music of Africa and the African Diaspora. As well, he performed in international music festivals in Africa, Europe and the US, including at the Chicago World Music Festival. He also taught and shared with student-musicians in courses, musical training, and workshops for the practice, study and mastery arguably of one of the greatest living Sufi Egyptian musical masters: Abdo Dagher. These included for instance: the Carnegie Hall Musical Exchange; the German National Music Schools in (East) Berlin and Hanover; Harvard University, Los Angeles Mission College, the Children’s World Academy in Montreal and the American Universities in Cairo and Beirut.
As an Artist Fellow at the Akademie Schloss Solitude in Stuttgart, Dr. Riad utilized his fellowship to invite Mr. Dagher and Mr. Roman Bunka, German composer and musician, to give for one of the first times, a 5-day Arabische Musik (Arabic Music) workshop and performance with German musicians and for audiences. Dr. Riad lived in the densely populated Hadayek El Qobba, nearby Mr. Dagher’s home and music salon. In the stream of ‘ethnomusicology’, Dr. Riad logged an ‘oral’ and ‘aural’ diary about this uniquely Egyptian Arabic traditional style of playing the violin. However, oral/aural method of transmission of Arabic music is the norm. Dagher had already taught generations of musicians in his music salon in this manner. Although Egyptian musicians had already been notating Mr. Dagher’s music for decades, Dr. Riad wished to dig deep into the profundity and complexity of Mr. Dagher’s musical method. So, Dr. Riad set out to notate hundreds of exercises and compositions from live sessions and recordings of Dagher’s inimitable, violin playing-style. Some of these musical exercises, which Dr. Riad transcribed (arranged), which, circulated amongst some professional musicians, found them useful. For example, one professional musician in Cairo expressed to Dr. Riad, that although they loved attending Mr. Dagher’s saharaat (evening, musical sessions), due to their numerous music studio jobs in Cairo, this precluded them to visiting as often as they truly wished. Having a score at home, they said, “..Was like having Abdo in the room with me”. In fact, Dr. Riad is deeply indebted to numerous musicians and chanters who suggested, notated, and in performance help properly notate (in western-notation) and know how to instrumentally, execute this musical method. Additionally, Dr. Riad facilitated receiving funding from the Netherlands Embassy in Cairo to create an “alternative”, “Music Salon School”. Mr. Dagher and Dr. Riad sustained their teaching program, which helped numerous young intermediate-level Egyptians practice their traditional Arabic music instruments: the kaman (violin), the nay (bamboo flute), the qanun (wood-framed trapezoidal zither), the oud (lute) and the riqq, duff and tabla (percussion instruments). As well, the Music Salon School received funding to handcraft such endangered folk instruments as the rababa and the mizmar. Dr. Riad collaborated to create the publication by International Opus: The New Sufi Egyptian Art Music by Abdo Dagher. Riad, thus was honored to contribute to disseminating a new, living devotional music (“sound”) school from the people of Arab lands of Egypt. Egyptian Musicologist Professor, Dr. Isaam El Malah, Executive Director of the Royal Opera House in Muscat said, to Dr. Riad about Abdo Dagher: “Mr. Dagher is a living and breathing embodiment of the Middle Ages’ Musical Masters”. Dagher’s salon has attracted for generations professional musicians, aficionados, and visitors from all over the world to hear his musical exercises, compositions and improvisations. Dagher — an octogenarian composer and violinist — accompanied one of the most celebrated, beloved, and femme célèbre singer of the Arab world: Oum Kalsoum.
Riad Abdel-Gawad’s full-length commercial albums — are distributed by City Hall Records. He provided his music for Democracy Now!, one of the most renowned independent news media outlets in the globe. Abdel-Gawad was commissioned by the New Music Ensemble of Liège for the Ars Musica Festival in Belgium. Dr. Riad was also commissioned by Barclays Wealth in collaboration with the European Stradivari Society to practice and perform on Stradivari and Guarneri violins at the Islamic Museum of Qatar.
