The concert is part of the activities of the Chair of Arab Studies, created in collaboration with Qatar Foundation.
Madrid, June 8, 2026.- The Reina Sofía School of Music will present the Virtuoso Et Trio concert on June 20. This concert aims to share the richness of classical modal Arab music and is part of the activities developed this academic year by the Chair of Arab Studies, an initiative created by the School in collaboration with Qatar Foundation.
The concert, with free admission upon prior invitation reservation, will take place at 12:00 PM in the School’s Sony Auditorium and will feature three prominent performers and specialists in Arab music: Ibrahim Kadar (nai), Taoufik Mirkhan (qanun), and Mustafa Said (oud). The program is structured in four parts: three solo performances, where the three instruments revolve around the art of taqsim, modal improvisation that beats at the heart of the Arab musical tradition: based on the internal logic of each maqam, the performer unfolds a free, ornamented, and deeply expressive discourse. The program will culminate with the trio jointly performing a Maqam Waslah in Segah, a suite that intertwines composition and improvisation based on works by Kemani Khedr Agha and Mustafa Said, set to a text by the poet and mystic Abu Mansour Al-Hallaj.
This concert is part of the initiatives promoted by the Chair of Arab Studies, a result of the collaboration between the Reina Sofía School of Music and Qatar Foundation, whose alliance aims to foster knowledge exchange and cultural dialogue through music, creating new bridges between Arab and Western musical traditions and promoting learning, creation, and research opportunities for new generations of musicians.
Additionally, as part of the Chair’s activities, various workshops will also be held between June 18 and 20 for students of the School’s Inditex Chair of Composition. Taught by the three performers from the concert, these workshops will offer a practical introduction to the expressive and technical possibilities of Arab musical instruments, as well as to the principles of the modal systems that underpin this musical tradition. The objective of this initiative is to facilitate a first approach for young composers to these instruments and to lay the groundwork for future academic and artistic collaboration projects.
