Reem Kelani in concert
The Pump Room
MENUReem Kelani was born in Manchester, in the Palestinian diaspora. Her mother came from Nazareth, her father from Ya’bad, near Jenin. Her first love musically was the jazz her father listened to, but at the age of nine she discovered Palestinian music when she was taken to a family wedding in Galilee.
She has spent much of her life since then researching the songs and singing styles of the Near and Middle East. With her long-term collaborator the exceptionally gifted Bruno Heinen on piano, she has developed an extraordinary, seamless fusion of Arabic music and jazz.
She is, Max Reinhardt said on Radio 3, ‘an astonishing vocalist’. Her voice ‘will make the hairs on your neck stand up’ (Jazz UK); it ‘is holy, strong and seductive, like a call to prayer’ (the Evening Standard).
In these grim times, this promises to be a memorable evening of music, poetry and – inevitably – deep emotion.