The Stroud Sacred Music Festival at St Laurence Church, Stroud, has become an iconic event in the Stroud calendar, bringing a world class line-up of global musicians year after year since 2015.
“The Stroud Centre for Peace and the Arts at St Laurence Church is committed to bringing peace through the arts and to connecting to all spiritual traditions through the universal language of music,” says pioneer vicar, Simon Howell.
This year's theme is Music from Out of Exile, in honour of the tragic circumstances so many people endure at the current time and in solidarity with the ground-breaking UK government's international conference to promote freedom of religion or belief 5-6 July 2022 in London .
“We are thrilled to welcome back Syrian & Queen of the Qanan Maya Youssef, now with her brilliant sextet, as our headline act in the evening concert on Saturday 9 July. She played the qanun for us exquisitely in 2018 and since then has created a second album to great acclaim. She is so in demand now and her tour calendar is full so we are extremely lucky to have her with us this year,” says Rev Simon Howell.
Ms. Youssef combines classical music training in quanan with contemporary concerns.
Her recent album ‘Finding Home’ tracks the journey of leaving her war-torn homeland at very short notice and finding sanctuary in UK. She describes the album as a process of seeking a more universal state of home that transcends geographical location or nation states. “I feel that we are all one,” says Ms. Youssef. “I feel that the earth is my home; and humanity is my home.”
Other contributors to the concert are the Muslim, Christian and Jewish musicians who make up Eastern Strings; Nabra quartet, Cecilia Ndhlovu from Zimbabwe, Matthew Heyse-Moore and the RagaBabas, the house band.
A unique morning event by world-class masters of Indian classical music K. Sridhar and Jesse Bannister offers the rare treat of an ’Informance on the Unstruck Sound’ with music, improvisation, presentations and audience dialogue. For the afternoon, people can enjoy chanting from different traditions in the Old Town Hall. Hot organic, vegan food with Indian and Thai flavours, as well as beverages and cakes will be available all evening.
