Education & Community Engagement:
Ocean Music Action
Saturday, March 22
11 AM (Concert)
2 PM (Volunteer Opportunity)

Some of the most beautiful music ever written was inspired by the ocean. Ocean Music Action presents carefully curated, multi-sensory concerts centered around our shared love of the ocean. The performances will leave you inspired, and they offer opportunities for further connection and engagement in a variety of settings.

PROGRAM

Ocean to Ocean by Layale Chaker (b. 1990)
Jisreen by Kinan Azmeh (b. 1976)
Yann's Flight by Shawn Conley (b. 1983)
Traveling Still by K. Azmeh and Shawn Conley
Oil Field Fires by Shane Shanahan (b. 1972)
Pi’s Scene by Shane Shanahan
Dear Ocean by Kinan Azmeh
Dual Intent by Layale Chaker (World Premiere)
Rabbath L’odyssée d’eau by Francois Rabbath (b. 1931)
Wedding by Kinan Azmeh

PROGRAM NOTES

Dear Ocean (2023)
For clarinet, bass, and harp
When language falls short in describing one's emotions about a subject or a person
we tend to look for answers in the arts, and music has been my main means of
communication for decades. Writing this piece I simply tried to imagine what I
would play/say if I go to the ocean on a winter day and stand before it. Dear Ocean
is a short love letter to the ocean that tries to put these feelings into sound, and it is
short because I cannot wait to leave my instrument behind and jump into the water.
-Kinan Azmeh

Duel Intent (2025 - World Premiere)
For voice, violin, clarinet, harp, bass and percussion
Every day in Beirut, a rare and stunning interplay of geography and celestial motion
happens —one that feels almost like an ancient ritual, unchanged by time. From a
single vantage point, you can witness the sun’s slow ascent from behind Jabal
Sannine, casting its first light over the mountain’s ridges, warming the city as it spills
westward. At the very same time, in a perfect symmetry, the same sun bows into the
Mediterranean, dissolving into the water as if completing a journey written into the
land itself. This phenomenon is more than just an alignment of earth and sky; it is a
daily reminder of Beirut’s unique place in the world—a city poised between
mountain and sea, between rootedness and departure. The sun traces a path that
mirrors the lives of those who call this place home: rising with the promise of the
day, setting with the longing of what lies beyond the horizon. In this work, I seek to
capture that duality: the weight of the mountain, the openness of the sea; the
tension of being held between two immensities. The music moves like light shifting
across a landscape—gradual, inevitable, yet always surprising. Harmonic textures
stretch and fold like the changing sky, melodies arc like the sun’s passage, and at
the heart of it all, there is a quiet awe: the daily miracle of seeing both a beginning
and an end from the same place. -Layale Chaker