May 17, 12:30 pm
New York Oud Festival
The New York Oud Festival returns for its second year from May 21-31, 2025, across New York City at venues in Brooklyn and Manhattan. Building on the 2024 inaugural festival, which had multiple sold-out and standing-room only shows, the 2025 event expands to nine events from five, featuring 19 oudists from the NY area and beyond. The festival showcases the oud’s role in traditional and contemporary music from Levantine, Armenian, Turkish, Palestinian, and SWANA cultures, engaging oud enthusiasts and world music fans.
New York Oud Festival Day 1 | Mal Barsamian, Ara Dinkjian
8pm (7pm doors)
Wednesday May 21st, 2025
The Sultan Room – 234 Starr St, Brooklyn, NY 11237
$25 advance ($30 door)
Tickets available through Sultan Room / https://link.dice.fm/NYOUDDay 1 of the festival will feature sets by oudists Mal Barsamian and Ara Dinkjian.
8pm (7pm doors)
Wednesday May 21st, 2025
The Sultan Room – 234 Starr St, Brooklyn, NY 11237
$25 advance ($30 door)
Tickets available through Sultan Room / https://link.dice.fm/NYOUDDay 1 of the festival will feature sets by oudists Mal Barsamian and Ara Dinkjian.
Ara Dinkjian is an Armenian-American composer/multi-instrumentalist. He graduated Hartt College of Music, earning the country’s first and only special degree in the oud. Ara is considered one of the finest oud players in the world. His groundbreaking group NIGHT ARK recorded four CDs for RCA/BMG and PolyGram/Universal. He has performed in 25 countries throughout the world. His compositions have been recorded by renowned singers in 16 different languages. Dinkjian’s composition “Homecoming” (“Dinata, Dinata”) was performed at the closing ceremonies of the 2004 Athens Olympics. The Ara Dinkjian Songbook was just published by Aras Publishing, which was founded by Hrant Dink.
Mal Barsamian’s musical career began when he was four years old playing the dumbeg (hand drum) with his father, Leo Barsamian, at an Armenian picnic. Barsamian comes from a family of oud (lute) players across multiple generations.He has gone on to become a sought-after oud player and clarinetist as well as on other instruments such as dumbeg, guitar, bouzouki, and saxophone in Armenian, Greek, and Middle Eastern communities for over 35 years throughout the country. He performed with the late Esber Korporcu, an important figure in Boston’s Middle Eastern music community, and has also appeared with Mehmet Sanlikol’s Dünya organization.
Barsamian is a specialist in music written by Armenian composers active in Istanbul during the later years of the Ottoman Empire. Also trained as a classical guitarist, he obtained his Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in classical guitar performance, studying with Robert Sullivan at NEC. Barsamian is also on the applied faculty at Tufts University’s World Music Department teaching oud and clarinet. This concert will display music from the Ottoman Empire by Armenian and Turkish Composers as well as a program of Folk music by First generation of Armenians of the early part of the 20th Century.
Sponsored by Brooklyn Maqam, Syrian Music Preservation Initiative, La Bella Strings, Brooklyn Arts Council, and NYC Department of Cultural Affairs, the New York Oud Festival is co-presented by Brooklyn Maqam, a 501c3 nonprofit dedicated to celebrating, preserving, and supporting new community-rooted Southwest Asian and North African musical traditions
