Lamia Yared & Efrén López - music from the Arab world & medieval Iberia

About

Lebanese-born singer and oud player Lamia Yared joins acclaimed Spanish multi-instrumentalist Efrén López for From Minho to Euphrates, a luminous musical journey through eight centuries of sacred and secular traditions.

Drawing on Yared’s Syriac-Maronite heritage and her deep immersion in Arabic, Ottoman, Persian, and medieval repertoires, the program weaves together 4th-century Syriac hymns, Aleppine Muwashahāt, medieval Iberian song, Sufi poetry, and a rare 13th-century composition by Safi al-Din al-Urmawi, one of the great theorists of Middle Eastern music.

Through López’s inventive modal arrangements, music from medieval Iberia is reimagined through the maqam system, revealing unexpected affinities between Galician-Portuguese devotion, Eastern Mediterranean ornamentation, and the living traditions of Arabic and Ottoman music. What emerges is not simply a historical reconstruction, but a contemporary dialogue across languages, faiths, and civilisations.

At once intimate, scholarly, and deeply expressive, From Minho to Euphrates invites listeners into a shared human story: one in which Christian hymns, Sufi poetry, courtly song, and ancient modal traditions continue to speak to one another across time.

"★★★★. To say that this album explores medieval religious music from around the Mediterranean undersells it." – Songlines UK