Fanoos Family Band
Performance Details
Date: Friday, March 3, 2023 at 7:00pm
Location: Williamsburg Regional Library
Admission: Free, no tickets required
The Fanoos Family Ensemble was re-established in freedom in 2022, following its members’ flight to freedom in the US from Taliban threats. Composed of members of the renowned musical family and joined by special musical guests, the group performs songs in the Afghan classical style, at the crossroads of Persian poetry, Hindustani rhythms, and Central Asian harmonies. They perform on traditional Afghan and classical Western instruments, and their Afghan source material is fused with contemporary sounds and enriched with original improvisations. The group reunited in the U.S. in December 2021 after five years apart, and made their US debut in the spring of 2022. In 2021, The Fanoos Family Ensemble performed under the “Heart of Afghanistan” project sponsored by American Voices. These performances include Musical Instrument Museum, MIM, in Phoenix, Arizona, Lincoln Center’s Summer For The City Music Series, Presented by Globalfest. Last September, they also performed and held workshops at Bard College, Accordion Festival at New York’s Bryant Park, ARTFARM in Middletown, Connecticut, White Eagle Hall in New Jersey, Kaufman Interfaith Institute in Grand Rapids, Michigan and Old Town School of Folk Music, in Chicago, Cedar Cultural Center in Minneapolis. The Fanoos Family Ensemble has performed at Folklife Festival in Washington D.C., hosted by Richard Kurin and Yo-Yo Ma. Their most recent performance was at Middlebury College, in Vermont.
Ahmad Fanoos
Ahmad Fanoos is an internationally renowned vocalist and harmonium player, having headlined and performed in live and televised performances in Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, Russia, and beyond. Recognized with many prestigious awards including the Best Artist Award in Afghanistan (2008) and the Golden Voice Award (Dubai 2012), the senior member of the family ensemble served for years as a coach and a judge for Afghan Star, the influential television program showcasing talented young Afghan performing artists which served as a catalyst for social and cultural change in Afghanistan by spanning all ethnic, language, and gender lines.
Ahmad Fanoos has also appeared in films and radio, and enjoys a significant international following on social media including YouTube and Facebook. Because of his notoriety as a musician and exponent of progressive ideals, his life, livelihood and family were threatened by the Taliban. He escaped from Kabul on a Fox News evacuation flight in the closing weeks of the US presence in Afghanistan in late August, 2021 and reunited with his sons later that year.
Elham Fanous
Elham Fanous is the leading Afghan pianist of his generation and Ahmad’s son. His life’s work is to embody a positive face of Afghanistan’s future and to provide hope to musicians and artists living under threats to their creative expression all around the world. Elham graduated from Manhattan School of Music in 2021 with a Master's Degree in piano performance, and from Hunter College in 2019 with a Bachelor’s Degree in music, magna cum laude. He also studied at the Franz Liszt Conservatory of Music in Weimar, Germany. Elham has performed as a soloist in major US venues including Carnegie Hall, the Kennedy Center, the Library of Congress; for members of the diplomatic corps of Australia, China, Germany, Italy, and Korea; and in solo recital appearances in Germany, Holland, Italy, and Poland. He was also one of the featured artists on New York’s Classical Music radio station WQXR “20 for 2020,” Artists to Watch.
Elham has been profiled and interviewed on National Public Radio’s Morning Edition by host Renee Montagne, on the BBC, on NBC Nightly News with Lester Holt, the Military Times (US), New York Post, Boston Globe, in the media in Italy, Britain, India, Pakistan, Taiwan and China, and as the subject of a documentary for ZDFtivi (Germany). Grants and awards include a Young Musical Scholars Foundation grant, Anna Sosenko Assist Trust Fund grant, and the Prince Claus Culture and Development grant. He performed the Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto with the Hunter College Orchestra as winner of the college’s Concerto Competition in 2018, and a prize winner in the Golden Key International Piano Competition in Frankfurt in 2012.
Mehran Fanoos
Mehran Fanoos is Ahmad’s youngest son. He is currently a scholarship student in the Bachelor of Music program at the Jacobs School of Music, Indiana University (US) where he studies with legendary violin pedagogue Mimi Zweig, Mehran started his violin studies at the age of 8 with Juilliard graduate William Harvey at the Afghanistan National Institute of Music (ANIM) and also briefly studied with Raja Singh while living in New Delhi, India.
Mehran has performed as a soloist at the U.S Embassy and German Embassy; for the former president of Afghanistan, Ashraf Ghani and German president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier at the German Embassy in Kabul; and as a featured soloist with the Afghanistan National Institute of Music Orchestra at the Royal Opera House Muscat, Oman. He has also collaborated with the two-time Grammy winning artist, Ricky Kej. In 2019, while living and studying in New Delhi, India under UNHCR protection, Mehran performed with the Kolkata Youth Orchestra at the Alliance Francaise.
