The Syrian civil war forced countless musicians into exile, but few have transformed displacement into such profound artistic expression as clarinetist and composer Kinan Azmeh. Born in Damascus in 1976, Azmeh began playing the clarinet at the age of six. He eventually pursued music studies at Damascus University before continuing his education at The Juilliard School, where he earned his doctorate from the City University of New York. His unique background—classical training rooted in Syrian soil, combined with academic rigor and boundless curiosity—has produced an artist influenced by many cultural traditions.
Azmeh's latest release, Live in Berlin, captures the Kinan Azmeh CityBand in full command of their collaborative powers. Recorded with his longtime musical partners—guitarist Kyle Sanna, bassist Josh Myers, and drummer John Hadfield—the album showcases compositions that span nearly a decade of creative output. The quartet, formed in New York City in 2006, has spent almost two decades developing what critics have praised as a "thoroughly exciting and rewarding listening experience,” one that balances classical music, jazz, and Middle Eastern influences without being constrained by any of these styles.
Live in Berlin arrives as Azmeh continues to gain international recognition across diverse musical contexts. He has appeared as a soloist with major orchestras, including the New York Philharmonic and the London Philharmonic, collaborated with luminaries such as Yo-Yo Ma and Daniel Barenboim, and won a Grammy as part of the Silk Road Ensemble. His 2019 orchestral album, Uneven Sky, earned Germany’s prestigious Opus Klassik Award, while his opera, Songs for Days to Come, premiered to critical acclaim in 2022. Recent recognition includes his appointment to the United States National Council for the Arts under the Biden administration.
Kinan Azmeh recently had a wide-ranging conversation with host Lawrence Peryer as a guest on the Spotlight On podcast. They discussed Azmeh's approach to balancing academic research with creative practice, his philosophy of musical collaboration across cultural traditions, and how his many intellectual interests inform his artistic vision. Azmeh also thoughtfully speaks about the relationship between technical mastery and meaningful expression, as well as how an artist maintains creative freedom while engaging with the complexities of our contemporary moment. You can listen to the entire conversation in the Spotlight On player below. The transcript has been edited for flow, clarity, and length.
Lawrence Peryer: I'm very curious about the relationship between your research and how your academic life informs your compositions. What have you learned that you can apply to the artistic part of your life?
Kinan Azmeh: It's an excellent question, because throughout my entire academic life, I have always been surrounded by people who enjoy culture and life. As a student who played clarinet in a city like Damascus—a city that is not necessarily famous for Western classical music, but that's what I studied—I think by default, having that as the backbone, my curiosity led me to ask, "What's out there? Where is the clarinet? Where can I find the clarinet?"
And, of course, the clarinet is found in a variety of musical styles, including jazz, Balkan music, and Turkish traditional music. Of course, there was the classical repertoire, but I continued to have an interest in contemporary music, specifically from Syria, where I'm from. When I decided to pursue my doctorate, I wanted to focus on the area that has been my primary focus as a performer throughout my life. I wanted to do something that would not stop me from touring and being the touring musician that I am, both as a performer and as a composer.
So when I was doing my research about Arabic identity and Arabic music vocabularies in clarinet works by Syrian composers—that's what I wrote about—it was a wonderful way for me also to juxtapose my works against the works of other composers who are from Syria, who are also like me, who have been exposed to a variety of musical traditions. All of these things happen in parallel. My entire educational life unfolded in parallel: the parallel between the composer and the performer, and also the parallels of traditions—studying Mozart, Bach, Brahms, and Beethoven while being surrounded on a day-to-day basis by ancient Syriac music, Armenian music, Kurdish music, and Arabic music. That's what you hear in the streets of Damascus.
Lawrence: And I'm curious if pursuing an academic path as far as you did—did you find that there were sacrifices you had to make with your music to pursue your education?
Kinan: I think when I was doing it—when I went to university, the High Institute of Music in Damascus, but also electrical engineering at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering at the University of Damascus—when I was doing both, I was simply thinking, "I want to learn everything. I want to try everything." I guess I continue to have this kind of attitude about life. I want to try everything. I want to expand my set of tools to the maximum.
Sometimes, now, when I’m playing, for example, I wonder—had I spent more time simply practicing rather than being obsessed with physics, cinema, politics, and sports, maybe I would have been a much more technically advanced player. Music, as important as it is for me, is not the only thing that makes life exciting. Music is the way through which I interact with the world and through which I can understand the world, and I know myself the best. But I can say the same about nature, and I can say the same about science, and I can say the same when I go and play soccer with friends. All of these activities are incredibly important.
I love the idea of sacrifice. However, when you use the word ‘sacrifice,’ I think the more things you do and the more well-rounded your background becomes, the more your attention is divided, because that’s the path you’ve chosen. Personally, I don't understand when people apply the single lane approach. People spend all their lives in a practice room, and sometimes they forget, "Why are we in this practice room? What am I trying to share? What am I trying to understand?" I think life has more to offer than just a single pathway that some people choose. So I don't think of it as a sacrifice. I think of it all as accumulating incredible lessons about life. Music is an aspect of it, but it's not the final destination.
Lawrence: It's not dissimilar from a lot of other creative fields where writers, in particular, are encouraged to go out into the world and live so that you have material to bring to your work. And that's very much how I'm hearing what you say—that you interact with other fields, other topics, other life experiences, and that just enriches what you're able to create.
Kinan: Exactly. Because music is an incredibly abstract art form. It might be one of the most abstract art forms. We do it and it pleases us. It fundamentally affects us when we experience that physical phenomenon. But if you put me on a rainy day, and I love rain, by the coast, I'm also fundamentally moved. And that's why, for me, just like all of us, I think humans have this capacity of how we receive the world. And it cannot be one way. I think people who choose just one way are missing out on a lot in life.
Music doesn't stand by itself. It's either in reaction to the world we live in, or it's an attempt by the artist to recreate the world in their ideal way, according to them. Or it might just be a tool for communication. In all of these scenarios, you must be able to interact with the world itself so that you have something to share and something to say in the music you're creating.
Lawrence: There's a quote of yours I’d love to discuss a bit. You said there is absolutely no difference in technique or performance between Eastern folk-inspired music and music from the Western classical tradition, and that the difference lies simply in how one hears the music. I love this notion on many levels. One, because there's a universalist message in that, which I think is so important, but also the notion of our ears and being ready for certain kinds of music at different times in our development. I would love for you to reflect on the statement you made, because I think there’s a lot in it.
Kinan: As someone who grew up in a multitude of traditions, encouraged by my parents to embrace what the world has to offer, I used Western classical music as a primary path because it was systematized in a way that gave me access to it. Also, it was available in Damascus, and my dad loved classical music. My mom loved Arabic music, so I grew up listening to both kinds of music at home.
For me, learning a musical vocabulary—the vocabulary itself was not the end goal. It was simply vocabulary. I think if you think of all the differences between all kinds of music, I understand there's some kind of geographical specification. But at the heart and the core of it, it's simply about an artist, a human trying to overcome the limitations of their instrument, including that person's voice if that person is a singer, to express an idea. For me, every music is about that.
The idea is the most important, and of course, you need to have the tools, such as the clarinet in my case, or your voice, to extract an idea and have language. I believe that the more languages you speak, the more effectively you can articulate your ideas. The more cultural references you have, the better you can work into all of these different references at any given moment. I think it gives you better ground for an argument.
I would think of every artistic expression, including music, as about that. You learn as much vocabulary as you can, but then you apply it to the world. The idea remains the most important to me. And I think that's where the universality of art-making lies.
But to understand what somebody was trying to introduce, the idea that another artist is trying to explain to you, you have to spend some time with that idea, especially in abstract music. To appreciate a Beethoven Symphony or a John Coltrane solo on the saxophone, you have to spend time with this music, because only then do you understand its novelty. You start to appreciate how it continues to surprise you. Music that has a clear idea and a strong character behind it, mixing the familiar with innovation, speaks to me.
Lawrence: The album that brought us together to talk is your newest release, Live in Berlin. My understanding is that the music featured here has been a long time coming in terms of being released—the compositions date back to the earliest days of the Syrian uprising. I'm curious if you could tell me a little bit about not only the evolution of the pieces but the evolution of your relationship to that work. That's a substantial body of time, and a lot happens in a life, a lot happens in the world, a lot happens to the people that you were thinking of when you created this music.
Kinan: I think maybe one track on that album was written before 2011, before the uprising began. All the other works were written somewhere between 2012 and 2018 or 2019. When the context changes, and I played these pieces around the world—I never played these pieces in Damascus, or in Syria at large, where I'm from, not yet—sharing all these pieces over the last fourteen years, as they've been added to the repertoire, has always been meaningful because I was trying to keep the story of home alive, especially pieces that have direct geographical connection.
There are two pieces on the album, "Daraa" and "Jisreen.” Jisreen is a small village outside of Damascus, where, growing up, my grandparents would invite the whole family every weekend to work on the land. Of course, the cousins would play around, but also work with the soil, or as I always like to say, the soil and the soul of the place. It is the place where I developed my most meaningful sense of home.
And that village, Jisreen, was largely devastated. It witnessed one of the chemical attacks, for example, and the whole village has been destroyed. For me, taking that piece and playing it was very therapeutic. That sense that I'm trying to keep the name of that village alive, but also I want to contribute to what was happening at home. I didn't want to become ‘the expatriate’ in a way, even though I know this music would not change the situation on the ground. But it was meaningful for me, even when I knew one hundred percent that nobody in the audience knew where Jisreen was.
The other one that I want to mention is "Daraa," which is the only non-original melody in the album. That's a melody that millions of Syrians used to sing during the early years of the uprising. It’s worth noting that at some point during the Syrian uprising in 2011 and 2012, millions of Syrians sang that melody in the streets. It took me a while to reflect on that melody and put it in a beautiful context. But for me, it was just that I wanted to keep their voices alive as well. It's not only commemorating the moment, but it was just very inspiring for me to hear millions of people singing that melody.
And now, when the context changed—the dictator fled the country—to play this music again has a different meaning. So, living with some of these pieces while their context changes, I’m reminded that most artworks undergo this kind of change in context. All the music that has survived decades and, in some cases, millennia, the context is bound to change. But for me, this change happened in a relatively short time. Music that was inspired by, I would like to say, composed despite the dictatorship—now to be able to play it gives me tremendous pleasure. When I announce this piece in the live concert and say that the dictator is gone and the melody has survived, it gives me an incredible moment of happiness.
Lawrence: That's powerful. When you tell me about the period over which you wrote these compositions, roughly from 2011 to 2018, it strikes me that you’re in dialogue with the situation, or perhaps you’re a documentarian. I'm curious how deep those analogies can go. Is this, on the one hand, an artist processing as witness, or is there a documentary element to it?
Kinan: The thing is, in my work on this album—yes, there are these pieces written between 2011 and 2018, but during that same period, I wrote maybe twenty or twenty-five other works. I noticed that during the first few years of the Syrian uprising, a lot of my music was about that—about what was going on and how I could contribute to the situation in any way. But then I also noticed that maybe around 2016 or 2017, it came to me again that making art should continue to be an act of freedom. And this freedom also includes not being held hostage by the tragedy.
The fact that your country, your people, or any people in the world are going through dark times—that has been the case throughout humanity. I also wanted to try to practice, "Can I free myself just for a second from that and write a piece about, I don't know, just a beautiful flower that I saw in the street?" Do I have that luxury or not? For example, in 2018, I wrote a clarinet concerto for myself with the Seattle Symphony, and I didn't choose anything from home for the title. It was just simply "Clarinet Concerto" because I wanted that space of freedom to play with.
So, I think the documentary aspect, of course, exists. We are all witnesses to things, and when we create, it's about owning our narrative. Anything you produce is part of the document. If you look at what Syria has produced artistically over the last fifteen years, it's inspiring. Some pieces or some films or some theater pieces are about the situation, about the dictator, about the prisons, about the atrocities. But also, there were lots of stories that came out—films that discuss basic human conditions, stories such as falling in love. For me, these stories should also be included in the document that we're leaving behind.
So, it’s not only documenting the tragedy, but also documenting how life includes tragedy. Yes, some of these pieces are part of the larger document, but I wouldn't consider them the only document, not even for me to fully understand what I did musically over the last fifteen years. This album is maybe thirty percent of what I created. And, as I said earlier, I’ll be in it, then I'll step out of it.
Lawrence: Something else I'm very interested in is the fact that you've got a band here that's been together now for the better part of two decades. That seems like such a luxury. I'm curious about how having that group, that ensemble of players, influences your compositional approach.
Kinan: I always write for people, not for instruments, and Kyle, John, and Josh are no different. So basically, when I think of a musical device or a musical idea or a concept that I would like—again, an idea comes, I would like to share with the world—I write down whatever I write down. But I know very well that once I bring this to the lab, as I describe it, which is these three wonderful musicians, I know that something unexpected can happen. We start playing pieces, and then a few ideas are created on the spot, which become part of the composition.
So if I have to analyze all these pieces note for note, everybody has contributed so much to what you hear now on the album. This band and I are not only a band. We have been brothers for many years, and we've shared so many stories—laughter, missed luggage, missed connections, sleeping on trains. We used to share hotel rooms in the early days. We just had wonderful times every single time.
Again, what is truly incredible, and I feel fortunate that we have reached this point, is the fact that we can now play with the music beyond just playing the music. We don't stop at playing the music. All the concerts happen without any music sheets. Everybody's playing from memory, and we can easily bring a piece out, if we want, in the middle of another piece. So this is the luxury of playing with people who continue to surprise you.
Lawrence: Tell me a little bit about how you move through the world as a collaborator. You've worked with some fascinating artists in some amazing situations, and I’m curious about how those collaborations shape and impact your musical identity and philosophies.
Kinan: Because of the nature of my instrument as a single-voice instrument, it's standard practice for me to collaborate. Collaboration, I think, is maybe the best way one can use to learn a new musical vocabulary. I started my Arabic jazz trio in Damascus in 2002, and through that experience, I learned a great deal about Arabic music. Now, from the CityBand quartet, I’m learning a lot of jazz idioms from working with that group.
One of the most incredible collaborators that I have had over the years has been the wonderful Yo-Yo Ma, whom I met through the Silk Road Ensemble. He is someone I worked with closely, and he is someone who continues to want to learn. It's incredible that someone at his artistic level is still someone with his ears, eyes, and brain open, just receiving all the time.
For me, collaboration is not only "What can you contribute to this conversation?" Actually, the opposite is true. I would like to listen to this person. It's an overused cliché, but you learn more when you listen more than when you speak. These collaborations take you elsewhere. I don't mean elsewhere in terms of where you stand in your career, but in what you want to say. It sharpens the idea of what you want to contribute to the world. It allows you to see what's important. Juxtaposing your ideas against someone else’s ideas, I think, sharpens both sets of ideas.
This conversation we're having, you and I, is beneficial for me because I can formulate my ideas more effectively this way, rather than just trying to put them into sentences on my own. I think all of us are collaborators by nature, and in music, collaboration means something else and something very deep. I also noticed that in my life, I have worked with my collaborators for many, many years. I rarely do a one-off because I always think that to collaborate on a deep level, it also takes time. That's the nature of the art form itself, as well as the nature of human connection. To become collaborators, not only acquaintances, you need time.
Visit Kinan Azmeh at kinanazmeh.com and follow him on Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube. Purchase Kinan Azmeh and CityBand’s Live in Berlin from Qobuz and listen on your streaming platform of choice.
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