Iraqi oud virtuoso and composer Rahim AlHaj returns to the Connecting Chords Music Festival, joined by Iranian santour maestro Sourena Sefati and world percussion master Javier Saume Mazzei.

“One of the top oud players in the world” (San Francisco Chronicle), Rahim was born in Baghdad, Iraq. He began playing the oud – the grandfather of all stringed instruments – in his second-grade classroom at age nine. In his nearly forty-year career, he has won many awards and accolades, including two Grammy nominations in 2008 and 2010, and the National Endowment for the Arts National Heritage Fellowship in 2015.

Sourena Sefati was born in Ramsar, Iran. He started playing santour (hammered dulcimer) at the age of eleven, and he has performed all over the world in his over 20-year career. Javier Saume Mazzei (percussion) is a native of Caracas, Venezuela, and he has performed internationally in concerts, master classes, and residencies in Beijing, China, and at the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C. and Carnegie Hall in New York.

Sefati and Malluf join AlHaj in this spirit of friendship, tolerance and an acknowledgement that everyone must live in peace under the same sky.