As part of his international tour across seven continents and 25 countries, American pianist Kimball Gallagher will perform at the Cairo Opera House on 6 April and at the Alexandria Opera House on 7 April.

The performances will include two works by Egyptian composer Ashraf Fouad, Sonata by John Baboukis, and Akhet (Horizon) by Egyptian-American composer Ryan Francis, before the evening closes with Franz Liszt's Sonata in B Minor, S.178. The concerts will be joined by Egyptian soprano Neveen Alouba and a special guest Taiwanese pianist Kaiyin Huang.

This is not Gallagher's first visit to Egypt. He spent a few weeks in Egypt in 2013 while working on his project titled 88-Concert Tou, exploring how salon culture, and home concerts can be incorporated into various cultures.

Gallagher held a "private home concert" on 15 March in Cairo from which LE48,000 was raised and donated to "the NGO Al-Fanar for one of their projects to help widows in Upper Egypt develop self-sufficiency and sustainable businesses," according to the musician. During this visit, Gallagher performed with the Bibliotheca Alexandrina as well as with El-Sakia String Orchestra conducted by Mohamed Saad Basha.

Together with American NGO, Cultures in Harmony, Gallagher collaborated with Alexandria-based Bridge on a project entitled Musical Koshary, which gathered four American and seven Egyptian musicians in joint project featuring German rock, Turkish, Egyptian, and western classical music.

Soprano Neveen Allouba graduated from the Cairo Conservatory, and continued her studies in Germany. She obtained her doctorate from Hannover’s Hochschule fur Music and Theater where she studied Opera Performance and Vocal Pedagogy. Today Allouba has a large repertoire to her name: she is a staff member of the Cairo Conservatoire, a member of the Cairo Opera Company and an Adjunct Professor of Voice at the American University in Cairo. Allouba is also the main dynamo behind Fabrica a project which aims at providing music education to young people and reviving the culture of performing musicals in Egypt. Fabrica is known for their last performance of Les Miserables in Egyptian Arabic.

Programme:
Sunday 6 April at 8pm
Small Hall, Cairo Opera House, Zamalek, Cairo
Monday 7 April at 8pm
Sayed Darwish Theatre (Alexandria Opera House), 22 El-Horreya Road, Raml Station, Alexandria