The Nile Project, Featuring Musicians From Nile Region of Africa, to Perform at U of U

As part of the UtahPresents 2016-17 season, The Nile Project will perform at Kingsbury Hall on the University of Utah campus on Saturday, February 11 at 7:30PM. Tickets are $20, with a $5 ticket for U of U students and a $10 ticket for non-U students, and are available at 801-581-7100 orutahpresents.org.

One of the tightest cross-cultural collaborations in history, the Nile Project brings together artists from the 11 Nile countries, representing over 400 million people, to make new music that combines the rich diversity of one of the oldest places on Earth. Resonant harps and lyres from up and down the river-from its sources beyond Lake Victoria to its delta in Egypt-have learned new musical modes, while buzzing timbres and ingenious polyrhythms support vocals in more than ten languages. Instruments that parted ways millennia before are reunited and pushed into new places. Love songs have crossed geographic and linguistic barriers to forge new, close friendships.

From their debut concert, captured live on the 2013 release entitled ASWAN, it was clear that the Nile Project was something completely new. NPR named the recording one of five "Must Hear International Albums." Fast forward a couple of years-through 2 Africa Tours and a 4-month US Tour with stops at 25 universities, the Lincoln Center and the United Nations-and almost every major media outlet in the US agrees that the Nile Project is much more than just a band.

Using music to spark cultural curiosity, the Nile Project engages musicians and audiences, encouraging them to feel connected to the world's longest river and to explore new approaches to its large-scale social, cultural, and environmental problems. The Collective's collaborative model is a blueprint for a new way Nile Citizens can organize themselves to cooperate to make the Nile more sustainable. In an evolving series of interlocking programs that spring from the concert experience, the project aims to inspire, educate and empower young people worldwide to become Nile Citizens.

View a video clip of The Nile Project: https://youtu.be/GWXVLLjD3yE