Home Within has been touring North America and Europe in efforts to raise awareness and funds for Syrian Refugees through a number of charitable organizations.

Kinan Azmeh

Hailed as “intensely soulful,” “a virtuoso” by The New York Times and as “spellbinding” by The New Yorker, Kinan Azmeh is one of Syria’s rising stars. With his utterly distinctive, “incredibly rich sound” (as the CBC referred to it), he is equally at home in many different
musical genres, and in the open, fertile spaces between them. His work seamlessly intertwines Western with Eastern styles, classical training with improvisational finesse.

Born in Damascus, Kinan was the first Arab to win the Premier Prize at the 1997 Nicolai Rubinstein International Competition in Moscow. He is a graduate of New York’s Juilliard School and the Damascus High Institute of Music. In 2013, Kinan earned his Doctorate
Degree in Music from the City University of New York. Kinan has appeared worldwide as a soloist, composer and improviser with highly acclaimed orchestras and musicians from around the world.

Kevork Mourad was born in 1970 in Syria. He received his MFA from the Yerevan Institute of Fine Arts in Armenia, and he now lives and works in New York. Six of his pieces are in permanent residency at the Gyumri Museum in Armenia, and several more at the Armenian Library and Museum of America in Watertown, Massachusetts. As part of group shows, his works were exhibited at the NYU Small Works Gallery in 2005 and 2007, and his digital piece, The Map of Future Movements, toured as part of a group exhibition in Jerusalem and Ramallah, and was featured in the 2010 Liverpool Biennial.

He has had solo exhibitions at Gallery Z in Providence, RI and at JK Gallery in Los Angeles. He is represented in the Middle East by Rafia Gallery in Damascus, Syria, where he exhibited in 2009. His solo show was also exhibited at the Courtyard Gallery in Dubai in 2010. Five of his pieces are in the permanent collection on the 70th floor of the Bourj Khalife in Dubai. He has had work auctioned twice at Christie’s Dubai.

With his technique of spontaneous painting, he has collaborated with many world-class musicians. As a teaching artist with the Silk Road Project, he has worked with public school students throughout the five boroughs of New York.

Alessio Menconi won the award as “Best Soloist” in Gran Prix du Jazz and in 1993 he won “Eddie Lang” contest, the most important competition for guitarists in Italy, winning the first prize as best Italian jazz guitarist. He toured in Europe, Asia, Africa, North, South and
Central America and recorded in over 40 cds with several international musicians. In 2003, he participated as the only Italian to the cd “Voodoo crossing - a tribute to Jimi Hendrix” with Robben Ford, Steve Lukather, Hiram Bullock, Larry Corryell and many others. He did tours in Italian embassies in India, Zambia, South Africa, Brazil, Nicaragua, Guatemala, El Salvador and Ecuador.

Today he teaches jazz guitar and jazz ensemble in the conservatory of Genoa and La Spezia. He received the “Jazz Lighthouse” career award in 2009. IIn 2011 he was selected as the only Italian in a CD compilation of world best jazz guitarist. In 2014 his CD “Sketches of Miles” was included in 100 best jazz records of the year in “Jazz It” magazine”.

ElSaffar is an expert trumpeter with a classical background, conversant not only in the language of contemporary jazz, but has created techniques to play microtones and ornaments idiomatic to Arabic music that are not typically heard on the trumpet. Additionally, he is a
purveyor of the centuries old, now endangered, Iraqi maqam tradition, which he performs actively as a vocalist and santur player. As a composer, ElSaffar has used the microtones found in Iraqi maqam music to create an innovative approach to harmony and melody.

Described as “an imaginative bandleader, expanding the vocabulary of the trumpet and at the same time the modern jazz ensemble,” (All About Jazz), ElSaffar is an important voice in an age of crosscultural music making.

Andrea Bertino, violin
Luca Panicciari, cello
Andrea Vigna-Taglianti, piano