Young classical musicians join forces in Middle Eastern ensemble

The founders of Riwaya Ensemble — all recent US music school grads — met online as they were looking to collaborate on pieces by Middle Eastern composers. 

“We all sort of had this meeting all together to say, OK, we’re each interested in this work,” said one of the co-founders, French Lebanese American violist Noémi Chemali. “We’re each doing our own projects. Why don’t we combine forces to make an ensemble?”

In October of 2023, they did just that, and since then, the New York-based group performed last fall in New York and New Haven, Connecticut, and subsequently recorded an album of work by Palestinian, Lebanese and Syrian composers. 

Lebanese-born composer Sami Seif, one of the co-founders, said the group carefully chose its name — riwaya is Arabic for “story” or sometimes “narrative”: “And that was important to us, of course, as an ensemble that seeks to tell the story, maybe perhaps to change the story.” 

For them, that refers to a collective story about the Middle East and sometimes, some specific ones — as in the piece, “Saffron Dusk,” by British Lebanese composer Bushra El-Turk. 

“It was written as a sort of remembrance for the August 2020 Beirut Sea port explosion, which, if you remember, was a very devastating explosion,” Chemali said. “The largest nonnuclear explosion to date. And it was a very traumatic time for a lot of Lebanese people.” 

“And of course, this has resonances now with everything that’s going on in the Middle East,” Chemali said. “[It’s] an homage to the people who lost their lives and to all of the places in the Middle East that have been destroyed from such devastating explosions over time.” 

Explosions and lives lost not just in Lebanon, but Gaza and Syria.

Chemali said that playing music by composers either from those places, or with links to them, has been a salve. 

“It’s easy to feel helpless in the face of global challenges such as what’s going on in the Middle East,” she said. “But I think having a practical avenue along with these guys, it’s really been a highlight. I guess silver lining would be the best way to explain it.”

Palestinian American clarinetist Amer Hasan, another co-founder of the ensemble, said that alludes to their larger goals: “Ultimately, our mission is to make sure that this music is performed and it’s celebrated and, of course, it’s heard.” 

They’re also forging their own path, trying to bring Middle Eastern sounds to classical music.

For example, in a movement of Kareem Roustom’s “Palestinian Songs and Dances” for clarinet, string quartet and audio playback, Hasan tries to mimic the sound of an instrument called the mijwiz on his clarinet.

“The mijwiz itself, it’s, I guess, similar to a bagpipe,” Hasan explained. “It’s a double-reed instrument without the bag. And so, just trying to create this kind of sound that had the same kind of nasally type of tone, very projecting at the same time, very resonant. And I was very, very happy to be able to pull into my toolbox of contemporary techniques.”

Elements of Middle Eastern folk music are part of Seif’s piece, “Syriac Fugato 2,” a duet for violin and viola — in this case, Arabic maqam music, which uses particular modes and rhythms. 

Seif said trying to notate this traditional improvised idiom for Western instruments wasn’t easy, but he was happy with the results.

“I liked the results because there was a challenge of how to create the kind of freedom I look for in music, the kind of freedom that exists in Arabic music and put it into Western ensemble music.”