Christiane Karam, "Balkan Dance"

December 11, 2012 2003 alumna and faculty member Christiane Karam is the champion of world music at Berklee. She directs the Balkan choir, the Middle Eastern Fusion ensemble, and is the founder and director of the annual Berklee Middle Eastern Festival. Her new record, Eastern Tapestries, blends musical vocabularies from India to the Mediterranean with an emphasis on Balkan and Middle Eastern styles. Of her original composition "Balkan Dance," she says, “Being part Armenian and part Lebanese, musical influences from both cultures naturally come out in my writing, which often stems from spontaneous improvisations. This particular piece combines a Bulgarian dance rhythm called kopanica with an Arabic mode known as bayati.”