George Sawa was born in Alexandria, Egypt.
He studied piano with Irene Drakides, a student of Alfred Cortot, and at the
Higher Institute of Arabic Music he studied voice, theory, and qanun (Arabic
psaltery). His qanun teachers are Muhammad al-Sa‘duni (a student of Mustapha
Bey Reda), Milad Mansur (a student of Abdel-Hamid al-Addabi), Amin Fahmi and
Mustapha Kamel. After immigrating to Canada in 1970, he studied ethnomusicology
at the University of Toronto, and obtained his doctorate in historical Arabic
musicology at the Department of Middle Eastern Studies. He has taught graduate
and undergraduate courses on medieval, modern, and religious music of the
Middle East at York University, and at the University of Toronto (1982-1995),
and held the Noor Visiting Professorhip at York University (2006-2007).
George is the author
of the fundamental and well-received study Music
Performance Practice in the Early cAbbasid Era, 132-320 AH/750-932 AD (Pontifical
Institute for Mediaeval Studies, Toronto, 1989; rpt. by The Institute of
Mediaeval Music, Ottawa, in 2004). His second book, Theories of Rhythms in Arabic Writings, 750-950 AD (Institute
of Mediaeval Music, forthcoming) is now being edited. He is the author of 40
articles on Arabic music history, including entries for The Dictionary of the Middle Ages, The Encyclopedia of Music in Canada and The Encyclopedia of Islam. He is
frequently invited to give papers, presentations, and lectures at international
conferences in the Middle East, North America, and Europe, speaking on various
aspects of medieval and modern Arabic music, as well as workshops on the
performance of Arabic classical music.
George has given
numerous concerts in Europe, North America and the Middle East. He is founder
and director of the Traditional Arabic Music Ensemble, which has been heard in
venues across Canada and the USA, and has been broadcast on the CBC. He has
recorded with Maureen Forrester, Raffi, Bram Morrisson and R. Murray Schafer.
He has appeared as a guest soloist with several groups specializing in Middle
Eastern music, and Early Music, and he has been a musical director for many of
the productions of the Arabesque Dance
Academy. He is the recipient of many SSHRCC grants, Canada Research
Fellowship, Canada Council and OAC Grants: he was awarded a Chalmers’ Foundation Grant to compose two
chants for R. Murray Schafer’s The Litany
of RA (1982); an Ontario Folk
Arts Recognition Fellowship from the OAC for his performances on
the qanun (1990); Canada Council Grant for
Small Ensemble(Music and Opera Section, 1992) to produce his own
concert;Venture Fund Grant from the
OAC, to share and develop Arabic music in Toronto (1993). He has also received
the prestigious Life-Time Achievement Award from the Egyptian Ministry of
Culture for his research in Arabic music history, and has been honored with the
award of excellence under the category for Arts and Culture by the Canadian
Arab Federation. Beside his research and performance, he teaches privately in
his studio (qanun, nay, finger cymbals, theory and music appreciation for belly
dancers). Among his students are many members of the maza meze ensemble (Sofia
Grigoriadis, Ernie and Maryam Tollar, Jennifer Moore and Jayne Browne); he has
also been a member of the teaching staff at the Arabic Music Retreat, Mount
Holyeke College, South Hadley, Mass., where he has also performed with Ali
Jihad Racy, Simon Shaheen, Bassam Saba, Youssef Kassab and Michel Merhej.
No comments:
Post a Comment