Qasyoun Trio
Trio Qasyoun* was established in 2014 in Cairo, Egypt.
The band consists of the two Syrian sisters Jawa Manla (oud) and Shaza Manla (qanoun) and the Syrian percussion player Modar Salama
Trio Qasyoun performs oriental Arabic music such as the music of Om Kalthoum, Mohamed Abdul Wahab, Mohamed Al Asbgy and many other great musicians, as well as traditional Syrian and Turkish music with new arrangements.
The first TV appearance of Trio Qasyoun in The Netherlands was at the well-known musical TV-show ‘Vrije Geluiden’. They have since played in… and played for the royal family on kingsday 2019.
*Qasyoun is the famous mountain overlooking the Syrian capital, Damascus, where the Manla sisters grew up. Qasyoun is an image that links between beauty and strength. When the two sisters play together, they imagine the mountain and their home land in their minds.
“In Damascus
the traveler sings to himself:
I return from Syria
neither alive
nor dead
but as clouds
that ease the butterfly’s burden
from my fugitive soul.”
Musicians
Shaza Manla
Shaza started her musical life at the age of five by taking music lessons in a private music school for children called Zeryab in Damascus. A year later she started solfege training at the Sulhi Al Wadi Institute in Damascus. In 2012, she moved with her family to Egypt where she studied Qanoun at the Cairo Opera House with the Egyptian Qanoun player Saber Abdul Sattar until 2014. She also had the chance to take lessons from other musicians, for instance the Syrian Qanoun player Ahmad Saab, and she took additional lessons in the Bait al Oud, the Arabic oud house in Cairo. Although still very young, she performed in Egypt in concerts with much older, well-established professional musicians.
In 2015 she came to The Netherlands where she currently plays with her sister Jawa and with other musicians in many different places.
In 2017 she won the Young Composers Competition organised by the Nederlands Blazers Ensemble. This allowed her to play a piece of music composed by herself at the New Year’s Concert of the Nederlands Blazers Ensemble in the Amsterdam Concertgebouw.
Modar Salama
Modar Salama is a drummer and percussionist, born in Damascus and based in Amsterdam. He studied classical and Oriental percussion at the Higher Institute of Music in Damascus and started to build his career as a drummer in Jazz and Latin music, while at the same time keeping in touch with his classical and Arabic roots. He played with the Syrian National Orchestra, the Syrian Big Band and many other international projects in China, Jordan, Malaysia, Tunisia, Austria, Germany, Lebanon, Denmark and Egypt. Modar worked in the field of Music Theatre, performing a huge number of plays in Syria and the Arabic world. He is now working on a number of projects as an Arabic percussion player and drummer and he is creating his own style influenced by the soul of the Orient.