Musiqa

We’re thrilled to learn that Oswald Huỳnh, our 2022 Emerging Composer fellow, has been selected for the 2026 Guggenheim fellowship in music composition! Congratulations Oswald on this incredible accomplishment!

Gearing up for Karim Al-Zand's World Premiere of the Strangers Case with Kinetic Ensemble and the Karim Sulayman. Tickets are Pay-What-You-Can and available now👇
https://matchouston.org/events/2026/strangers-case

On March 28, Musiqa and Kinetic Ensemble partner to present the world premiere of Canadian-American composer Karim Al-Zand's The Strangers’ Case. The GRAMMY® award-winning, Lebanese-American tenor Karim Sulayman joins the ensemble for this song cycle for tenor and string orchestra that gathers poems and other turn-of-the-century accounts by immigrants to the United States, and situates them among texts from canonically venerated authors including Shakespeare and Dickinson.

In Al-Zand’s words, “The Strangers’ Case aims to remind us of our shared history, fraught as it is with contradiction, filled with both selfless generosity and selfish indifference. By using text materials that span diverse nationalities, stories, voices and historical periods, The Strangers’ Case aims to make a case of its own: though our commitment to immigrants and refugees has been equivocal, nonetheless their success forms the basis of American strength and renewal. As the child of an immigrant, I believe this sort of consciousness-raising is the only way forward. And as an artist, I believe that music is an ideal spark to kindle the altruism in our better natures.”

Get your tickets to the premiere here: https://matchouston.org/events/2026/strangers-case