Founded in 2014, Nawa is a cooperation of Berlin-based musicians from Palestine, Syria, Italy, Greece, Poland, US.

The instrumental line-up consists of: the Arabic lute/oud (Nadim Sarrouh), the violin (Penelope Gkika), the oriental flute/nay (Valentina Bellanova), the contrabass (Adam Goodwin) and various forms of percussion (Amir Czwink). Nawa aims at contributing to the popularity of classical Arabic and Turkish chamber music, a genre very little known in the West.

 

The repertoire of Nawa
consists of pieces in traditional oriental musical forms such as: Sama'i, Bashraf, Longa, Darij, Tahmila, Dulab and many more. However, Nawa also interprets contemporary compositions in a classical setup. Central to all kind of oriental musical forms is the Taqsim: a structured, mode-based instrumental improvisation which focusses on rhythmic and melodic patterns in order to explore modes and modulations. Together with the structured musical forms it creates a highly dynamic and lively listening experience, very much alike to western improvisation genres such as Jazz.