On Sunday, January 22, Chinese New Year, Kinan Azmeh joined the London Philharmonic Orchestra to perforn in A place to call home combined with a tribute to Chinese-American composer Tan Dun. 

"He came to London with his Clarinet Concerto, written in 2018, with himself as soloist. That was probably essential for this piece as the concerto allows a lot of space for improvisation in Syrian musical styles and Azmeh is a virtuoso. There is no programmatic element, except the enjoyment of freedom, which must have been on his mind after the 2017 incident. Syrian and western musical styles are very well blended, the lively Arabic katakufti or nawari rhythms creating quite a buzz, and the whole concerto bowls along."

On Thursday, January 18, Syrian clarinetist and composer Kinan Azmeh performed his own Clarinet Concerto with the London Philharmonic Orchestra. 

"Azmeh delivered in spades. First as a performer. His posture is quite something – a confident stance from toe to clarinet bell with sufficient flexibility as to make the moves in response to the sounds he creates balletic."

The London Philharmonic welcomed Kinan Azmeh as well as conductor Enrique Mazzola in a perfomance of Azmeh's own Clarinet Concerto. 

"The solo clarinet was by turns rhapsodic and perky, exuberant and reflective, prayerful and uninhibited, while the accompaniment moved from lamentation to animation."

"Although trained at the Juilliard School and based in New York, Azmeh was during
the Trump presidency temporarily banned from returning home under a draconian
travel ban, an episode that led directly to his writing the concerto. “Freedom” has been
a hard-fought right — and then there is the shadow of the destruction and atrocities in
his native Syria."

"An amazing masterpiece"
- Hannoversche Allgemeine Zeitung

"It is the most extensive project that the Osnabrück Theater has realized together with the Morgenland Festival Osnabrück in its history: the music theater SONGS FOR DAYS TO COME by the Syrian composer and clarinettist Kinan Azmeh. His new work is not a narrative opera in the traditional sense, but a multi-layered mosaic of music, poetry and stage events. The focus of the plot is on 15 poems by Syrian poets, which deal with the recent history of Syria and the civil war that has been going on since 2011."