UCSB Middle East Ensemble Winter Concert

Each quarter, the UCSB Middle East Ensemble presents a fascinating concert of music and dance reflecting the great diversity of cultures of the Middle East and Central Asia, including parts of the Balkans that were under the Ottoman Empire from the late 14th to early 20th centuries.

Directed by Professor Scott Marcus, head of the Ethnomusicology Program at UCSB, this winter quarter concert, on Saturday, March 7 and the second of three annual concerts presented in the Music Department’s Lotte Lehman Hall, will feature music and dance from Persia, Azerbaijan, Egypt, Lebanon, Iraq, Armenia, and the greater Ottoman Empire. 

The ensemble, founded by Marcus in 1989,  is comprised of undergraduates, graduate students, faculty, and community members, and features traditional instruments including the oud, qanun, baglama saz, ney, mizmar or zurna, and traditional drums such as the darabouka,  d’hol, and riqq, plus modern instruments including violin, bass, and accordion. Between pieces, Marcus explains the music, instruments, and something about the dances. Ensemble concerts are always educational as well as entertaining!

Part of each winter concert is devoted to the music and dance of Persia in honor of Nowruz, the Persian New Year, which occurs this year on March 20. This concert will feature an extended set of Persian classical music, led by Dr. Bahram Osqueezadeh, continuing lecturer and scholar in the UCSB Music Department, who is also a composer and concert artist. Guest artist Amin Mahinin, playing the kamancha, will lead a set of Azerbaijani music. Originally from Tabriz, now residing in Los Angeles, Mahinin will bring a children’s Ajerbaijani dance group to perform in this concert.

Among the dances to be presented is bandari, a popular folk dance from Iran’s southern coastal region. Bandari, meaning “of the port,” in an upbeat 6/8 tempo, features fast footwork, shoulder shimmies, and hand movements that are said to imitate the movements of fishermen. Bandari reflects centuries of trade and cultural exchange with diverse populations, including African, Arabic, and Indian traditions.

I asked Marcus how he became interested in Middle Eastern music. He explained that he had been studying north Indian classical music, including extensive periods living in northern India, but when he entered the Ph.D. program at UCLA in 1978, they demanded he choose a second area of specialization. At that time, the now-famous scholar/musician Professor Ali Jihad Racy had just joined the UCLA faculty, and Marcus began learning oud from him. Fast forward to 1989, Marcus published his doctoral dissertation entitled “Arab Music Theory in the Modern Period,” joined the UCSB faculty of Ethnomusicology, and started UCSB’s Middle East Ensemble.

Marcus’s son, Ziyad, also a graduate of UCLA, with a BA in Ethnomusicology, an MA in Fine Arts from CalArts, and an MA in Education from Bard College, now co-leads the Ensemble’s large percussion section with Nan Rudnicki Capelle. Capelle succeeds her sister Sue Rudnicki, who led the percussion section from its inception in 1989 until her passing in 2025.

I asked Marcus, as a musician, how he decided to include dance. He explained that even as a Ph.D. student at UCLA, he had begun “gigging” with a troupe of dancers in L.A., with his advisor, Racy. When he arrived in Santa Barbara, he met dancer Alexandra King, who was performing with a small group of musicians downtown. He invited her to direct a dance troupe for the ensemble, and so began an amazing thirty-plus-year collaboration.

Alexandra King, the premier danseuse of Middle Eastern dance on the West Coast and artistic director of the Ensemble Dance Group, has trained many of the current generation of professional Middle Eastern dancers in California. King’s interest in multicultural dances began in her childhood. Born in New York City and raised in the Virgin Islands, she grew up with a blend of African, Latin, and East Indian cultures. Her inspiration to become a professional dancer came from growing up in a family with three generations of performing artists in stage, film, and music, on both sides. King has performed all over the U.S., as well as in Europe and Egypt, and has traveled and studied extensively in Greece, North Africa, and the Middle East.

Besides the Persian folk dance Bandari, the dancers will present the Egyptian dance Haggala, with choreography from the Reda Troupe of Egypt, arranged by King, and King’s own choreography Eshta, to a drum solo played by the Ensemble drum section. This quarter, the ensemble will premiere a new work: A Sephardic Wedding in the Ottoman Empire, choreographed by former ensemble dancer and choreographer, Dr. Jatila van der Veen.

Sephardic traditional life flourished in the Ottoman Empire, where Jews did not live in social and cultural isolation as they were forced to do in other countries. The Ottoman Sephardim assimilated external customs, including dress, food, music, and wedding traditions. This extended set depicts some of the wedding traditions: dressing the bride and setting the wedding table, a dance for the bride and her entourage, a dance for the groom, and a final dance for all the guests. The ensemble will play a taqsim (an arrhythmic solo improvisation), and three folk dance pieces that were common to the Sephardic, Ottoman, and Macedonian cultures: Jeni Jol, La Comida La Mañana (a wedding song in Ladino), and Cupurlika, which was originally taught to the ensemble by Maestro Goran Alachki of Macedonia.

Finally, I asked Marcus how he sees the ensemble’s role in this troubled world. He said, “I see the ensemble as serving to celebrate the various cultures in the Middle East. We study these cultures, perform them, celebrate them, and in so doing, teach the larger community about them. The ensemble serves as a counterbalance to the predominantly political (and negative) presentations of the Middle East found in Western media.”

Tickets can be purchased online or at the box office before the show, which starts at 7:30 pm. UCSB students and children under 12 get in for free.