Mohamed Antar - Oriental Breeze

Oriental Breeze is an idea through which Antar presents twelve of his compositions with different ideology and structure in addition to five free instrumental improvisations. Through his compositions, Antar introduces Maqams and Rhythms uncommon in Arab music and sometimes, he presents Maqam and rhythm structures which have no proof of previous existence in the middle-eastern music. Though the album is not played in Fasil form, still each group of tracks represent one of the Arab music Maqam families dividing the album into four imaginary parts: Dugah family, Rast family, Hijaz Family and Nahawand Family with a total of seventeen tracks.

Oriental Secrets Ensemble
Oriental Secrets Ensemble was founded in 2007 mainly to perform Mohammed Antar’s traditional light musical compositions which have different musical characteristics that makes it unsuitable to be performed by Ensemble Munajah. Despite the fact that the traditional Arab music Fasil form is not adopted in the presentation of this kind of music, still there are characteristics of this form which is noticeable in the instrumental free and rhythmic improvisation as well as the respective presentation of the pieces with similar or related Maqams. A number of these compositions is even presented within typical Fasils in Antar’s other musical projects.