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A Syrian artist and musician probe crisis and music at International House

It is becoming accepted wisdom that art must be about more than just art. We now expect art to relate to realms outside itself - as a social truth-teller, lens to social injustice, or tool for "activating" civic spaces.

Kinan Azmeh (pictured) and Kevork Mourad (visuals) from Home Within, which they performed at International House.
Kinan Azmeh (pictured) and Kevork Mourad (visuals) from Home Within, which they performed at International House.Read morePhoto: Aidan Un

It is becoming accepted wisdom that art must be about more than just art. We now expect art to relate to realms outside itself - as a social truth-teller, lens to social injustice, or tool for "activating" civic spaces.

I'm not sure where this leaves art for art's sake, since art can settle scores on behalf of humanity only sometimes. And who could have looked into the hearts of anyone in the room Tuesday night, when clarinetist Kinan Azmeh and visual artist Kevork Mourad teamed up for Home Within?

The multimedia performance piece, just under an hour long, is described by the New York-based, Syrian-born artists as "an impressionistic reflection on the Syrian Revolution and its aftermath." Impressive as the work is, it often risked being too beautiful for its own good. If you walked into the theater at International House Philadelphia with little previous knowledge of the conflict that the United Nations estimates has left more than 200,000 dead, you might have experienced a work that grapples with notions of creation and destruction mostly in the vaguest ways.

As Azmeh played, Mourad stood nearby, sketching, his work projected onto a big screen behind the clarinetist. Sound was sometimes treated with electronic reverb, and a slow-shutter effect blurred Mourad's hand motions as they left line drawings behind. There were no words (except an on-screen dedication to the people of Syria at the end) as buildings and people were conjured in real time.

The sensitivity with which images and scenes unfolded with Azmeh's soulful playing made for a rather melancholy magic storybook experience. You could look at the paucity of specificity regarding the situation in Syria as a virtue. It gave the viewer-listener space for rumination. And maybe for this knowing audience, assembled by Intercultural Journeys, no hand-holding was needed. I was especially taken with the introduction of animated human figures, and with Mourad's vestigial sketch style (black on white and white on black) that has a personalized take on tension. Azmeh (Juilliard School-trained, a member of the Silk Road Ensemble) has a lovely sound and flexibility that give him the power, along with other sounds and prerecorded music, to make subtle emotional points.

In one particularly arresting moment, the musician walked up to a radio sketched on the screen, and appeared to turn it off. The hazy strains were those of Brahms, a brief recorded patch of the String Sextet No. 2 in G Major. What did it mean - why Brahms? These matters are in the eye and ear of the beholder, but here the message seemed two-pronged and sharp: for one people in crisis, a tuning out of culture; and for another, a poignant goodbye to art for art's sake. But which was which?

pdobrin@phillynews.com

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