Mohammed Antar, (1978-), is an Egyptian musician, Ney player and conductor of Ensemble Munajah for meditative middle-eastern music and Oriental Secrets Ensemble for traditional middle-eastern light music. He is mostly concerned with the Original Middle-eastern musical traditions by which he is abided in his own compositions. Through these compositions, whether restricted by the original forms or in newly invented forms, he tries to set a link between the Middle-eastern rich musical heritage and the contemporary era through developing this musical tradition from the origin, i.e., the main lines, including the shape and the style, are still preserved, yet, he tries to usually make his musical phrases in different styles so as to break the monotony often caused from the stylistic repetitions. Antar’s musical education started as early as his primary school where he learned how to play Piano, Flute-Recorder and Accordion. He met the Ney for the first time in 1993 and learned it in a short time. During his university life, he temporarily stopped his musical activities until in the year 2000 when he listened to the original Arab, Turkish and Persian musical traditions. He then decided to devote himself to studying and developing this original oriental art. He, as a consequence, started to develop his Ney playing through studying with different masters belonging to the different Ney schools, until, in 2003, he decided to dispose himself of his post graduate studies in English and Comparative Literature and professionalise the Middle-eastern musical art. Having studied and mastered the three major Ney styles, namely Arab, Turkish and Persian ney styles, furnished a room for him to make his own Ney style which has characteristics of the above-mentioned schools. Also, his careful listening to the different musical types, with concentration on the oriental musical traditions which he studied with greater care, gave him a special musical taste reflected in his musical compositions which appeal to the ears of the audience no matter how their musical backgrounds are, as his compositions have musical structural elements taken from all the musical traditions he acquired. Despite the fact that, since 2003, he, as a ney player, used to be a member of various musical groups, starting June 2007, he abandoned his work with the other musicians and he has been more concerned with presenting his own work, and rarely does he play with other groups which do not share the same interests unless in a project through which his work or musical ideology is presented. As a consequence, in addition to supervising, conducting and playing in his own musical projects, he, as a Ney player, plays only with Asil Ensemble, a group conducted by his brother which has a similar musical attitude yet applied mostly on Arab music. So far, as a Ney soloist, Mohammed Antar gave solo Ney concerts in Egypt, Lebanon, United Kingdom and Turkey since 2004, conducted and played with his different musical groups in Egypt, Turkey and Lebanon since 2004, and performed as a guest or as a main performer with other groups in Egypt, Lebanon, Turkey, Azerbaijan, Jordan, Switzerland and Bahrain since 2003. Equally, he presented research papers, gave lectures and conducted workshops in Egypt, United Kingdom and Turkey. A number of his compositions have been performed by other national and international performers. He received various Gifts for Honour as a participant in musical events as a soloist or with his musical groups. He released a couple of solo Ney improvisational albums the first of which is entitled In Mawlana’s Presence in 2007 (only as Digital album), the second is entitled The Arab Maqam in 2008 (Eka3 Productions), and with his group Oriental Secrets Ensemble he released an instrumental light musical album entitled Oriental Breeze in 2009 (Eka3 Productions), and with the Spanish guitarist Fernando Perez, he released an album entitled Nabadat mina’sh-Sharq in 2009 (Personal Production). He also participated in the recording of albums by Eshq Group and Asil Ensemble in which some of his compositions are performed.
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