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Doha: Dana Al Fardan, critically acclaimed Qatari musician, composer, songwriter and symphonic artist, will volunteer with the Qatar Red Crescent Society (QRCS), United Nations (UN) and United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, to support their joint humanitarian campaign for Gaza.
Over one million Palestine refugees in Gaza depend on food assistance. Dana, the Qatar Red Crescent Society, the UN Secretary General’s Humanitarian Envoy, and UNRWA have launched the “Bring Hope for Gaza” campaign to ensure families have food on their tables this Ramadan. For QAR138, an emergency basket can provide food for a family in Gaza throughout the Holy Month.
Dana is an official "Friend for Palestine Refugee". Recently, she visited some UNRWA schools, a hospital, and a number of community centres in the Palestinians Refugee camps in Amman, Jordan, shedding light on the situation in Gaza, with an aim to encourage others to support. The public fundraising campaign will run throughout Ramadan, led by QRCS, as all donations collected will be directed towards UNRWA.
Commenting on her participation in the campaign, Dana said: “I am incredibly honoured to be part of this important and needed initiative. Spending time in Jordan has shown me the amount of difficulties that Palestinians face on daily basis. It’s the duty of every Arab and every Qatari to stand by them and support them through this time of critical need. I do hope that during the Holy Month of Ramadan we make a conscious choice to support the right cause.”
Dana has also composed a song for the campaign, which will go live during Ramadan accompanied by a video of her visit to the UNRWA schools in Jordan. The song will be aired on the UNRWA website and many other TV channels during Ramadan.
“The purpose of this campaign is to spotlight the calamity of our Palestinian brothers, let their voices be heard and urge the international community to help those blockaded in Gaza,” said Ali bin Hassan al-Hammadi, Secretary-General of QRCS.
Dana Alfardan, whose compositions have gained international recognition, has returned to Qatar from a world-wide promotion of the West-End production Broken Wings, which she has composed. The successful businesswoman and musician, recently named the official composer for Qatar Airways.
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About Dana Al Fardan:
Dana Al Fardan is Qatar’s only female contemporary composer. Also a songwriter and symphonic artist, drawing on her rich cultural heritage and influenced by her love of world music, her work is a blend of Arab-influenced contemporary classical, epic in scale and universally accessible. With a considerable local audience, she is already garnering international attention, enhanced by the cross-continental reception to her most recent album release, Sandstorm, and her appointment as the official composer for Qatar Airways, quite literally taking her music to the world as her material entertains passengers on all the airline’s global flight paths. Dana's commitment to education programmes nurturing the creative talents of her country’s next generation, is contributing the very creation of Qatar’s burgeoning music industry from its very foundations.
An aspiring musician from a young age, inspired by the work of a plethora of classical and musical theatre composers, Dana has long hoped for an opportunity to bring the international spotlight to the music and culture of her Qatari homeland, acting as a cultural ambassador through her work both at home and her international collaborations. She says, “The state has invested a lot in culture, education and in human capital to give nationals the opportunity and resources to expand their cultural understanding and stand out at a global level. As an artist, my job is to show this to the world.”
Dana works closely with the internationally renowned Qatar Philharmonic Orchestra (QPO), who regularly perform her music in Doha. Her fourth album, Sandstorm, was recorded by a string ensemble comprised of QPO members, at Doha’s Katara Studios, a world-class recording facility, and representatives of the orchestra played alongside the London Metropolitan Orchestra at the iconic Theatre Royal Haymarket in London, debuting a full programme of Dana’s repertoire and bringing Qatari music to a UK audience for the first time, to rapturous response.
Dana's ongoing projects include two films for British directors with a hand-selected international team of talented arrangers, orchestrators and producers, preparations for a series of concerts in London, and a packed programme of events in Doha. A programme of her music has also recently been performed in Moscow to mark the launch of the Qatar Russia year of Culture 2018.
Alongside working on new projects, Dana has also just finished the co-writing of a musical with Nadim Naaman. Based on Khalil Gibran’s 1912 poetic novel, Broken Wings, the work is a story that that Dana hopes will bring another dimension to people’s understanding of Kahlil Gibran as a person and illustrate some of fundamental points that led to his evolution as the prolific writer that we know. Dana hopes this will appeal to an international audience “Western readers know Gibran from his global best-seller, The Prophet. Broken Wings encompasses everything I love about musical theatre. It is an internationally accessible story, brought to life by the universal language of music. If I found it emotional seeing my album Sandstorm performed on the London stage, seeing my own musical in the West End later this year after a lifetime of being in the audience will probably floor me!” Broken Wings debut night is on the 1st August 2018, The Theatre Royal Haymarket, West End, London.
Broken wings will be performed at the Beittedine Festival in Lebanon from 24 – 26 July 2019, more info can be found here: http://beiteddineartfestival.com/event/broken-wings-a-new-musical-based-on-gibran-khalil-gibrans-poetic-novel/
The musical is also coming to Doha in 2019 and a further announcement is coming soon.
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