Haram with Gordon Grdina

Date: Sat, Nov 18, 2017 08:00PM
Price: $40, $36 Friends Includes same-day Museum admission

Experience the work of exemplary artists who show us the myriad ways cultures communicate through the performing arts. Linked thematically with HERE, the Museum’s first exhibition devoted to contemporary Canadian art, our Conversation Nation series of events offers a chance to see and hear innovative, inspiring, and socially relevant performances by renowned Canadian artists.

A powerful blend of indie-rock, jazz, and electro, this Vancouver-based ensemble takes their name from the Arabic word for “forbidden,” improvising around Iraqi folk music and mid-century Egyptian pop. Featuring Gordon Grdina on Iraqi oud, expect to hear elements of electronics and free improvisation. As The Georgia Straight noted, “The music’s backbone is traditional, but wild outbursts of free improvisation and subtle injections of noise make it quite unlike anything you’d hear in the shisha dens of Cairo or Baghdad.”

This event includes same-day Museum admission.

Gordon Grdina is a JUNO Award-winning oud/guitar player equally accomplished in free-form improvisation, playing mainstream jazz and Arabic classical music. Grdina is protégé of two jazz greats, Gary Peacock and Charles Israels, who themselves played with jazz juggernauts Miles Davis, Herbie Hancock, John Hancock, and Billie Holliday.

Photo(s) by Jonathan Cruz