Alexandria Library honours musician
The Alexandria Library is holding a ceremony on Tuesday to celebrate the release of the complete collection of works by Egyptian maestro Sharif Muhie al-Din.
Muhie al-Din’s music acquires its importance from the fact that the composer focuses on the creativeness of the most notable Arab poets and authors.
His musical works, composed over a period of more than 20 years, have for the first time been released on a set of six CDs.
His most renowned works are compositions for poems written by well-known poets, including the late Egyptian Amal Dungul. Dungul’s poems Death in Bed, Introduction, Flowers, Genesis, The Rain and Against Who? are represented in the collection.
“There are poems from the late Syrian poet Nizar Qabani, like Jerusalem, and for the Egyptian poet Ahmed Abd al-Mutei Hijaz,” Muhie al-Din said.
The composer earned his first degree in music from Cairo Concert Conservatory when he was 14-years old. He then left for Germany to pursue his musical studies.
Sixteen years ago, he introduced his first symphonies at the Egyptian Opera, and after the reopening of the Alexandria Library in 2000 he was appointed the leader of its orchestra.
Muhie al-Din also supervises the library’s artistic activities.
Alexandria Library flourished 16 centuries ago, but a fire, which ravaged ancient Alexandria, destroyed it – the world’s biggest known library at the time.
The Egyptian government revived it, with work starting in the mid 1990s. The inauguration took place in 2000.