Layth & Yoni: Voices of Home
Music and storytelling
Coming in 2026
Layth Sidiq
Layth Sidiq is a Grammy-nominated violinist, composer, and educator and the current artistic director of the New York Arabic Orchestra. He has toured the world and shared the stage with major artists such as Simon Shaheen, Danilo Perez, and Jack Dejohnette, as well as performing in prestigious venues like the London Jazz Festival, Boston Symphony Hall, WOMEX Expo, Panama Jazz Festival, and more. He is featured on multiple award-winning albums and his first record Son of Tigris premiered at the Montreal Jazz Festival in 2016.
In 2018, Layth won second place at the Seifert International Jazz Violin Competition as the first Arab to ever participate, and he was also awarded 'Best International Artist' at the 2020 Boston Music Awards. He also directs the Center for Arabic Culture's Youth Orchestra Program in Boston and was a faculty member at Carnegie Hall’s ‘Music Educators Workshop’. Layth is the lead vocalist and violinist for the Assassin’s Creed game ‘Mirage’, which was released in 2023.
Yoni Avi Battat
Yoni Avi Battat brings Arab music into the soundscape of American Jewish life through composition, education, prayer, and performance on viola, violin, oud, and vocals. Described as "an education for the ear and the soul," his debut album Fragments seeks to find new pathways to connect with ancestry and find healing around our fragmented identities, and especially his Iraqi-Jewish heritage. Yoni's newest project is Kedmah: The Rising Song Piyyut Project. Their first album Simu Lev came out in April, 2024 on Rising Song Records, presenting traditional Jewish music from Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Morocco, Turkey, and Jerusalem. He has performed and recorded extensively as a solo artist and as a sideman with musicians such as Joey Weisenberg, Rabbi Yosef Goldman, Zach Mayer, Laura Elkeslassy, Nava Tehilah, and Yair Dalal, amongst others. From 2021-2022 Yoni toured nationally as an actor and violinist with the Tony Award-winning musical, “The Band’s Visit.” Yoni lives in Boston, MA, working locally and nationally to uplift Mizrahi (Middle-Eastern) identity in American Jewish communities.
Spectacle Collective
Spectacle Collective is a non-profit organization formed in 2019 to bring classical music into conversation with other art forms. Members include Amy Meyer (director), Subaiou Carter (violin), Jessica Cooper (viola), Alyssa Lawson (cello), and Nicole Wendl (violin). Previous performances by the Spectacle Collective Quartet include Dmitri in the Dark (circus performers with Shostakovich Quartet No. 6) and Luz & Leyendas (shadow puppetry and traditional Andean instruments with music by Gabriela Lena Frank, Javier Farías, and Víctor Jara).
“How do we connect with the lost generations of ancestors we never met, whose rituals we never experienced, whose voices we never heard? How do we overcome the fragmenting forces of migration, lost languages, colonialism, assimilation, and erasure? How do we find beauty amongst the broken pieces?”
-Yoni Avi Battat in the liner notes to his album Fragments