Turkwaz: The Feeling of Free

Enjoy a free, music-filled midday break in the O'Brien Atrium. Bring your meal, grab a spot, and experience incredible live performances by talented artists—it's the perfect way to refuel your energy for the rest of the day!

Turkwaz is a unique combination of four musicians, immersed in diverse traditions from mysterious Sufi devotional love songs, to rousing Thracian dance music. Each performer brings a special flavour to the group: Maryem Hassan Tollar draws on her Arabic language heritage; Jayne Brown and Sophia Grigoriadis bring their experience with Greek music; and Brenna MacCrimmon adds Turkish elements to this mix. They have a long-standing collective interest in Balkan traditions and bring Albanian, Bulgarian and Macedonian songs (and whatever else strikes their fancy) to their repertoire. The love and respect they have for the traditions they draw from are clear, but they are not afraid to arrange the tunes in new and unexpected ways, giving them a fresh spin.