“The kind of gig you watched and prayed would never end, charged with such magic that you knew you would be telling people about it in years to come.”

—Straight No Chaser

Tunisian-born singer and oud player, Dhafer Youssef, will be making his Minnesota debut and kicking off the Walker Art Center‘s New World Jazz Series on Thursday, September 27th at 8:00 pm.

Dhafer Youssef’s hypnotic, Sufi-inspired music connects the ancient with the modern, the East with the West in an enticing coalescence of culture. Youssef draws on the evocative sound of his Islamic heritage, combining it with new directions in European jazz and “a voice that could stop wars” (Songlines) to create timeless atmospheres of sound.

Youssef will be joined in the Walker Art Center’s McGuire Theater by a very accomplished string quartet—Todd Reynolds, violin; Daisy Jopling, violin; Caleb Burhans, viola; Mark Helias, bass; and percussionist Satoshi Takeishi.

Dhafer Youssef tickets are $22 ($18 Walker members).

Dhafer Youssef Quartet performing at the ‘Jazz Onze Plus’ festival in Lausanne on October 28, 2006. The quartet performs the song ‘Odd Poetry’ from Dhafer’s 2006 Jazzland release ‘Divine Shadows’.