Music – magpie

17 April 2026

Tamaas times

28 January 2026

It’s part of the job of a new arts centre to create new traditions – regular, loyalty-building events that deliver something understandable and familiar while exemplifying what the organisation stands for. In its 11 years of operation, NYUAD’s Arts Center [ … ]

Making contact: the Tamaaas Festival

9 February 2025

Tamaas means ‘contact’ in Arabic (and Farsi too, as it happens). That’s a neat summary of what we should expect from an arts centre – contact as communication and connection, but also contact as collision. Maybe we’ll get all three [ … ]

Small world, big show

22 November 2023

All musical endeavours have a backstory, of course. But few have as interesting a context as Small Island Big Song. The easy part first: Small Island Big Song is a touring show (and associated albums and film) that gigs at [ … ]

‘World music’: useful gateway term or controversial stereotype?

14 June 2023

There really is no ‘world music’. It’s a marketing term created by the music industry to help sell non-Western music to Western buyers. In that respect, it’s proved a useful way of introducing artists from elsewhere to consumers in the [ … ]

From Andalusia with love

30 March 2023

Faraj Abyad is an interesting performer. He’s a Syrian-American composer, singer and a multi-instrumentalist, brought up in the States and living in New York City. He specialises in writing and performing music in a distinctive Arabic tradition – albeit one [ … ]

Making music in the UAE: the half-term report?

29 March 2023

It was World Piano Day on 29 March – the 88th day of the year, corresponding to the 88 keys of a full-size piano keyboard – so we took the opportunity to ask Ioannis Potamousis, pianist and educator, about the [ … ]

A cool gig for the cooler evenings: Raul Midon and Alex Cuba

26 October 2022

The weather’s getting more pleasant for long outdoor evenings, which means it’s time for The Arts Center at NYUAD to move some of its performance outside into the East Plaza. The first such al fresco event this season features two [ … ]