A new album for solo piano by the Lebanese-Italian pianist Ramzi Hakim, and the Lebanese composer Wajdi Abou Diab.
Wajdi Abou Diab – arrangement
Ramzi Hakim – piano performance, recording, mixing, and editing
Charbel Bark – mastering
Agnese Franchini – cover design
The album is a collection of the most famous Arabic songs, arranged for piano solo.
This work comes as an attempt to bring together the various traditional Arabic musical dialects, and to present them in a unified musical language.
The aim of choosing the classical musical style, as a means of presenting it, specifically by adopting the piano instrument of global spread, was to try to build a bridge of communication between European classical music and Arab music, and to expose the audience of classical music to our Arab heritage.
The publication of these arrangements in a digital book, and placing it within the reach of professional musicians, pianists, piano professors and their students, had a great impact on compensating for the shortage in distributions of Arabic songs for the piano instrument, especially after the increased demand for such works by fans of Arabic music all around the world.
Among the biggest challenges of this work was the transfer of lyrical Arabic music to instrumental piano music, including its melody and rhythm, adding to it the piano classic harmonic character while preserving the Arab identity in melody and content, and being careful not to distort the melody and rhythm, while taking into account the lyrics and its content in terms of the story and the symbolism of each song.
This album plays an important role in preserving a group of Arabic melodies that occupied a prominent place for a long period of time in our social life and our musical memory, through the written and audio archiving of the melodies of these songs
The entire work was recorded remotely, as the musician Ramzi Al-Hakim prepared the pieces and recorded them, then sent them to the author to share opinions and reach the desired goal, and it is interesting that the author and the musician did not actually meet at all, and they got to know some of them through social networking sites.
About the Artist
Ramzi Hakim Italian-Lebanese, born in Lebanon in 1977, began studying piano at age of six, obtaining a Bachelor in the Higher National Conservatory of Lebanon. Since 1998, he pursued his studies and professional activities in Italy. He achieved his piano Master degree with Professor Maria Teresa Carunchio and higher diploma in Electronic Music and Sound Design with M° Eugenio Giordani in Conservatory of Music “G. Rossini” in Pesaro. He continued his studies at National Conservatory of Music “A. Buzzolla” Adria and the International Academy of Padova with Federica Righini. He attended several master classes in chamber music with Alla Volkova, and Massimiliano Damerini. He joined the International Academy of Music in Rome with Konstantin Bogino.
For seven years he has been working regularly with “Fortuna Theater” in Fano in various productions and Opera festivals, both as piano accompanist and soloist in their the recitals. Since 2011 he has been pianist of the Singing Opera School in the same Theater with Professor Agata Bieńkowska.
In 2009 he founded Trio Ayesha and won several international competitions in International Chamber Music Competition “Città di Pesaro”, XVII Competition “Giulio Rospigliosi”, International Competition “Pietro Argento” Gioia del Colle, and XIII International Competition of Corato Euterpe.
He was invited to perform throughout Italy and abroad in major season’s festival. Some of the major venues are: Teatro della Fortuna in Fano, Teatro Rossini in Pesaro, Teatro comunale in Cagli, Festival Eté Mosan in Belgium, Auditorium Hariri in Lebanon, Festival Duni in Mater, Taranto, Bologna and Lecce. He played in various chamber ensembles and orchestras such as Symphonic Orchestra Rossini.
Since 2014, he has been actively engaged in intense teaching and concert performance in UAE.
Listen to the full Album here
Watch the Release video here
Download press kit here
Visit Ramzi Hakim profile here
Articles about the album release
WAJDI ABOU DIAB 
Ciao Ramzi, sei un grande. Un grande saluto da Candela Giovanni