Omar Khairat to perform at closing ceremony of Citadel Music Festival

CAIRO - 1 September 2019: Veteran musician Omar Khairat will perform at the closing ceremony of the Citadel Music Festival on September 1.

The Citadel Music Festival kicked off on August 18, under the auspices of the Ministry of Culture and Cairo Opera House.

Additionally, Khairat performed two concerts in Bibliotheca Alexandrina on August 5,6.

The renowned composer and pianist was born in Alexandria and raised in a family of musicians. He began his career in 1959 as a pianist.

Khairat was a member of the Egyptian band Les Petits Chats, founded in 1967. They presented Italian, French and English songs. The band was immensely popular in the late 1960s and the early 1970s.

Khairat is influenced by different genres of music such as Arabic, European classical, Egyptian, African, Jazz, Pop, and Blues. He won the Best Musician Award in 1989 from the Egyptian Society for Cinema.

Khairat is a composer that can blend the style of international symphonies with Egyptian music masterfully. He has composed many successful music pieces such as “DameerAblaHikmat” (AblaHikmat’s Conscience), “Wagh el-Kamar” (The Moon's Face) and “Leilet el-KabdalaFatma” (The Night Fatma was Arrested), among others.

Khairat performed an unforgettable concert at Al-Ula Saudi city, where he dazzled the attendees with his music as part of Winter Tantoura Festival on January 11.

It is worth mentioning that Khairat performed his first concert in London at the Concert hall in St. John’s Smith Square on December 1, 2017.

This concert aimed to collect donations for charity and raise public awareness about street kids and orphans in Egypt.

The Egyptian virtuoso musician also performed a dazzling concert at the Mariinsky Theatre in the cultural city of Saint Petersburg on June 18, 2018 in celebration of the Egyptian national football team’s participation in the World Cup after 28 years of absence.

The concert was also organized to boost tourism and spread awareness about the Egyptian culture.

Omar Khairat composed the soundtrack of “El-Mamar” (The Passage), which illustrates one of the most heroic battles ever fought by Egyptian soldiers. The movie was released in Eid el-Fitr.