HANIYA ASLAM TRIO
Small World Music
Had my first solo show in Toronto this past weekend. Still reeling from what a great experience it was. Incredible musicians, great venue, superb sound. And the perfect audience. Definitely need to do more of this!
Here are the musicians I had the honour of sharing the stage with:
Multi-instrumentalist, composer, vocalist, producer and film maker, Waleed was born in Sudan. He began performing at the age of 6. In Sudan, Waleed was known for bringing traditional rhythms into popular music. When he left Sudan at age 18, he performed, recorded and toured extensively, appearing at major music festivals in Stockholm, Copenhagen, Frankfurt and Oslo as well as in Finland and Iceland. He demonstrates his versatility on guitar, bass, drums, harmonica, kirin, darabhuka, marimba, congas, djembe, dumbek and tama and has been invited to perform in festivals and conduct workshops (merging music and movement) in Spain, France, the UK and Portugal. Waleed is one of the 12 resident artists at Soulpepper Theatre . He has also played and recorded with David Clayton Thomas, the Motown Legend Band “The Drifters”, Doug Riley, Jackie Richardson, Julie Black, Deborah Cox and Zaki Ibrahim. Waleed is the film director of the award winning documentary "Let’s Find A Way”, and has been music director of a series of shows at the Caliban Arts Theatre (Freedom Live), Inner Stage as well as with various dance companies. He has also composed and produced music for several TV shows as well some main stream movies and is the winner of a "Canada New Pioneer Award" in 2011.Waleed is a Music teacher at Humber College.
Naghmeh Farahmand a multi-skilled Iranian percussionist was born in 1980. She is the daughter of a leading master percussionist Mahmoud Farahmand. Naghmeh has studied Iranian traditional rhythms on tonbak under supervision of her father, while learning Sufi and Kurdish rhythms on daf and dayereh from Bijan Kamkar and Masoud Habibi. In addition, she has also studied santoor under the guidance of Faramarz Payvar and Pashang Kamkar, and is also skillful on other percussion instruments such as darbuka, djembe, udu, kangaroo, cajon and drum set. Naghmeh has performed with well-known ensembles in Iran and festivals and tours around the world, while also collaborating with Iranian TV for over a decade. In 2010 she moved to Canada and released her solo percussion album “Unbound”, while also collaborating with top performers of world music, Persian and Western Classical music. She has vast experience teaching at different institutes of music and has also conducted workshops throughout the world. In 2016 she released her first Instructional DVD on Persian rhythms, “The Iranian Daf“, in international drumming language.
Peter Lutek, reed instrumentalist, performs improvised music. His training as a classical and avant-garde bassoonist led to extensive exploration of the clarinets and saxophones, as well as composition and electronic synthesis. He has played with New Music Concerts (Toronto), NUMUS (Waterloo), and the Freddie Stone Ensemble, and was a founding member of the 40 Fingers saxophone quartet. Peter was also a member of the Toronto collective, Composers Workshop. He leads ENGINE, and performs regularly with Tom Richards' Riverrun, David Mott, David Buchbinder, Andrew Downing, Circle Music Band, and the Avi Granite:6. Mr. Lutek also works as a sound engineer. He was session engineer, editor, and mixer for the 40 fingers quartet, and has been responsible for all phases of production in numerous recordings over the last 10 years for David Mott, Joseph Petric, and Tom Richards. Mr. Lutek also mixed and mastered 'The Tortoise', the acclaimed debut recording by Rob Mosher's Storytime.
