MUSCAT: The Sultanate of Oman will host the Aga Khan Music Awards at the Royal Opera House Muscat on October 30.

The awards nite will be celebrated at a ceremony and series of events in Muscat organised in conjunction with the Aga Khan Award for Architecture from October 29-31.

India’s Zakir Hussain will be bestowed with the Lifetime Achievement award in recognition of his outstanding model of cross-cultural musicianship that elevated the profile of tabla in India and around the world.

The Aga Khan Music Awards Master Jury also named Sultanate of Oman’s Musallam al-Kathiry as the winner of a special award for Excellence in Service to Omani Musical Heritage. Musallam, a music researcher, arts manager, performer and composer from Muscat has made important contributions to the collection, documentation, preservation and dissemination of Omani music.

The jury also announced 10 other winners of the Aga Khan Music Awards 2022: Afel Bocoum (Mali), Asin Khan Langa (India), Coumbane Mint Ely Warakane (Mauritania ), Daud Khan Sadozai (Afghanistan), Peni Candra Rini (Indonesia), Soumik Datta (The United Kingdom), Yahya Hussein Abdallah (Tanzania), Yasmin Shah Hosseini (Iran), Zarsanga (Pakistan) while, Dilshad Khan (India), Golshan Ensemble (Iran), Sain Zahoor (Pakistan), Seyyed Mogammad Mausavi & Mahoor Institute (Iran) and Zulkifli and Buram (Aceh in Indonesia) received special mention.

The Master Jury comprises Franghiz Ali-Zadeh, Divya Bhatia, Rachel Cooper, Yurdal Tokcan and Dhafer Youssef.

The Aga Khan Award for Music was established in 2018 and is held every three years, to celebrate exceptional and promising creative abilities and specialized projects in all fields of music: performance, innovation and education to preserve and revive musical traditions where Muslims have a large presence around the world.

The first edition of the Aga Khan Music Awards was organized at Lisbon, Portugal in 2019 and was hosted by the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation in cooperation with the Lisbon Municipality.

The Aga Khan Music Awards Steering Committee is co-chaired by the Aga Khan and Prince Amyn Aga Khan including Ara Guzelimian, Sir Jonathan Mills, Joseph Melillo, Salima Hashmi, Shamsh Kassim-Lakha and Zeyba Rahman.

The ceremony includes announcing the award winners in the performance category, as well as presenting a special sponsor award and reviving musical segments that bring together the 10 winners from 13 countries, through a musical performance in which music professors who have won the Aga Khan Awards for Music, solo artists and qualified orchestras will perform. Aga Khan Music pieces are inspired by the deep roots of the cultures of the Middle East, the Mediterranean Basin, South Asia, Central Asia and China.