Al Nour Wal Amal Orchestra with maestro Tamer Fahmy
The concert, scheduled for Thursday, 17 October, is part of the Royal Opera House's celebration of Omani Women's Day.
The evening will open with the Royal Oman Symphony Orchestra (ROSO) Ladies Chamber Ensemble, followed by Al Nour Wal Amal's performance in the second half, where they will be also joined by the ROSO Ensemble, alongside the Moroccan pianist Nour Ayadi.
Conducted by Tamer Fahmy, Al Nour Wal Amal, an Egyptian orchestra made up of blind and visually impaired musicians, will perform works by Josef Strauss, Dmitri Shostakovich, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Camille Saint-Saëns, and Jacques Offenbach. The program also includes Mohamed Abdel-Wahab's Doaa El Sharq.
Accompanied by the orchestra, Ayadi will perform the Allegro movement from Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 12, K. 414 in A major,
This marks Al Nour Wal Amal's debut performance in Oman. The same concert was initially scheduled for 19 October 2023 but was cancelled due to the outbreak of the Israeli war on Gaza (7 October 2023). In response to the war, many Arab cultural institutions and artists postponed or cancelled events in solidarity with Palestine.
The evening's original lineup also included a performance by Lebanese star Majida El Roumi, who withdrew due to the attack on her home country (1 October 2024).
For the orchestra, this concert will be their first international appearance without Amal Fikry (1929-2024), the long-serving president of Al Nour Wal Amal Institute, who passed away in March 2024. Fikry, who had supported the orchestra since the late 1960s, played a key role in organizing their performances in Egypt and abroad.
Al-Nour Wal Amal
The orchestra is part of Al-Nour Wal Amal Association, an NGO for Egyptian blind girls founded in 1954 by a group of volunteers led by the late Istiklal Radi, with the aim of educating visually impaired girls and helping them integrate into society.
In 1961, seven years after the establishment of the association, Al-Nour Wal Amal Music Institute was founded by the late Samha El-Kholy, former dean of the Cairo Conservatory. The girls started being trained by musicians from the Cairo Conservatory and the Cairo Symphony Orchestra. The girls study all aspects of music: theory, harmony, solfege, ear-training and learn to read music in Braille.
With the dawn of the 1970s, the few musicians strong orchestra started performing across a variety of venues in Cairo and made its first appearance at the stage of the Old (Khedivial) Opera House in early 1971. International tours kicked off in 1988, when the orchestra performed in the famous Town Hall of Vienna.
In the following decades, the orchestra performed extensively in more than 30 countries on five continents.
Today, the orchestra's repertoire consists of many well-known Western classical music compositions, topped with a few works from the Arab/Oriental repertoire. Often they also add a work of the country they are visiting to their performance.
Throughout the years, the orchestra was led by maestri Ahmed Abul Eid, Ali Osman, and Mohamed Saad Basha.
The current conductor of the orchestra is Tamer Fahmy, a musicians who also teaches the girls and is the ensemble's music director.
Royal Opera House Muscat
The orchestra's first visit to Oman will be at the Royal Opera House Muscat, which describes itself as "a place of learning, entertainment, and inspiration." The Royal Opera House is a leading cultural institution in Oman, hosting top performers and ensembles from the Arab world and the international stage.
The 2024-25 season has already featured Verdi's Un Ballo in Maschera, performed by the National Centre of Performing Arts Beijing (NCPA). Upcoming performances include India's sitar virtuoso Nishat Khan accompanied by the European Philharmonic Orchestra under conductor Walter Proost. They also include a concert featuring Lebanese-Canadian soprano Joyce El Khouri, pianist Serouj Kradjian, and a Lebanese ensemble performing Scheherazade, among other events.
Short link: