New York Oud Festival Day Two

Name: New York Oud Festival Day Two
Start: 2025-05-22T19:00:00-04:00
End: 2025-05-22T23:00:00-04:00
Location: barbès

: May 22, 7 pm – 11 pm.

: $30-35

Event website

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 2 | Rami Gabriel, David Chorowski, Kane Mathis
7pm (6:30 doors)
Thursday May 22nd, 2025
Barbès – 376 9th St, Brooklyn, NY 11215
$30 advance ($35 door)Day 2 of the festival will feature sets by oudists Rami Gabriel, David Chorowski, and Kane Mathis. Seating is limited so first-come first-serve. Limited pre-sale, we expect turnover throughout the night, and to let in many folks at the door!

Rami Gabriel is a composer and producer who plays Oud, Buzuq, and Guitar. He was awarded the Creative Catalyst grant by the Illinois Arts Council for 2025 and performs widely across North America. Rami leads Chicago favorites The Arab Blues and Rami & the Reliables. His solo album, That’s what I been sayin’ was released by Sooper records in 2024. Photo credit: John Boehm

Kane Mathis began taking Oud lessons in Istanbul in 1998 with Mutlu Torun, author of the acclaimed Oud method “Ud Metodu.” He then studied closely with Oud virtuoso Münir Nurettin Beken, a founding member of the State Turkish Music Ensemble, for five years. Afterward, Kane led the Seattle Turkish Music Ensemble. Kane has lectured and performed worldwide , and composes for ensembles, film, and dance. Kane has received the Earshot Jazz Album of the Year award and in 2025 became the only American Oud Player to perform at the prestigious Katara Oud Festival in Qatar.

David Chorowski is a multi-instrumentalist Oud player from New York specializing in folk and classical musics from The Middle East, Western Mediterranean, and Medieval Europe. Starting in his early teens with belly dance drumming in NY and Oud lessons with the late Bassam Saba and then joining the national touring act Wine and Alchemy fresh out of high school. David performs regularly throughout the diverse communities around the tri-state area along with his own original compostions, Buzuq for the band Harmal, percussion for Ta Pedia Tis Polis and was the oud chair for the 2024 off-Broadway We Live In Cairo

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