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Rick Miramontez / Matthew Troillett
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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE, PLEASE

RICHARD RODGERS AWARD WINNERS
SONGWRITING BROTHER DUO
DANIEL AND PATRICK LAZOUR
ANNOUNCE THE RELEASE OF
“FLAP MY WINGS”
THE FIRST SINGLE
FROM THEIR FORTHCOMING ALBUM

FLAP MY WINGS:
SONGS FROM WE LIVE IN CAIRO

VIRTUALLY PRODUCED DURING THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC
FEATURING ARTISTS FROM AROUND THE GLOBE INCLUDING
RAMY ESSAM, EMEL MATHLOUTHI, ROTANA, HAMED SINNO,
AND MORE

FULL ALBUM
TO BE RELEASED JANUARY 25, 2021
ON THE ANNIVERSARY OF THE TAHRIR SQUARE PROTESTS
THAT BEGAN THE EGYPTIAN REVOLUTION

New York, NY (December 9, 2020) – Brothers, songwriters, and collaborators, Daniel and Patrick Lazour have announced the forthcoming release of their independently-produced album Flap My Wings: Songs From We Live in Cairo, featuring songs from their musical, the Richard Rodgers Award-winning We Live in Cairo, seen in the Spring of 2019 at the American Repertory Theater in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

The first song from the album, the title track, Flap My Wings, interpreted by Daniel and Patrick, is now available via iTunes or Spotify (click to download).

The full album will be released on January 25, 2021, the tenth anniversary of the Tahrir Square protests that began the Egyptian Revolution in 2011.

“When we can’t come together as normal, how else might we connect to imagine a world different from our own?” said Daniel and Patrick. “It is our hope that this album helps to create community through music in an increasingly fractured society.”

“Flap My Wings, the first song from our album of the same title, is a response to the 2010 killing of an Egyptian student, Khaled Said, at the hands of the police. It explores the ways the deep state manipulates, corrupts and makes injustice status quo – and how we have, totally and completely within ourselves, the tools to change that,” they added.

Virtually gathering an extraordinary group of artists from across the globe during the current coronavirus pandemic, the remotely recorded album features artists from the cast of the musical as well as major Arab activist-songwriters, including Ramy Essam, Emel Mathlouthi, Rotana, Hadi Eldebeck, Hamed Sinno, Naseem Alatrash, and the brothers themselves.

Flap My Wings is written by the Lazours, arranged by Madeline Smith with additional orchestrations by Michael Starobin, produced by Robin Buyer, and performed by the Lazours (vocals and guitar), Naseem Alatrash (cello), Bengisu Gökçe (violin), John Murchison (qanun and bass), Jeremy Smith (percussion), and Madeline Smith (keyboard).

Flap My Wings: Songs From We Live in Cairo is executive produced by Madeleine Foster Bersin; music supervision and selected arrangements by Madeline Smith; album art by Ganzeer; conceived with Taibi Magar; music production, sound engineering, and mixing by Robin Buyer; mastering by Ryan Schwabe; with additional orchestrations by Michael Starobin and percussion direction by Jeremy Smith. Flap My Wings: Songs From We Live in Cairo, written by the Lazours, was recorded remotely and at Pulse Music (NYC).

Flap My Wings: Songs from We Live in Cairo was supported by The American Repertory Theater at Harvard University (Diane Paulus, Artistic Director; Diane Borger, Executive Producer) where the stage production of We Live in Cairo had its world premiere on May 22, 2019.

CLICK TO DOWNLOAD ARTWORK, BY GANZEER.

LINKS
iTunes: https://music.apple.com/us/album/flap-my-wings-single/1539830801?uo=4             Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/album/0aquxwlnrG0UyFkY6QPKWz?si=IPAGbm88RA-Onl2BxzG4yg

ABOUT THE ALBUM
Flap My Wings: Songs from We Live in Cairo features reconceptualized songs from the score of Daniel Lazour and Patrick Lazour’s Richard Rodgers Award-winning musical We Live in Cairo as interpreted by some of the world’s foremost Arab and Arab-American singers, musicians, and revolutionaries alongside the Lazours themselves. Returning to the score’s roots as a series of protest songs and using remote recording technology to engage collaborators around the world, Flap My Wings, which was conceived and recorded entirely during 2020’s global quarantines and lockdowns, explores the politics and aesthetics of protest and self-expression under extraordinary circumstances.

ABOUT “WE LIVE IN CAIRO”
Inspired by the young Egyptians who took to the streets in 2011 to overthrow President Hosni Mubarak, We Live in Cairo follows six revolutionary students armed with laptops and cameras, guitars and spray cans as they come of age in contemporary Cairo. We Live in Cairo moves from the jubilation of Tahrir Square through the tumultuous years that followed. As escalating division and violence lead to a military crackdown, the revolutionaries of Tahrir must confront the question of how—or even whether—to keep their dreams of change alive.

BIOGRAPHY
Daniel and Patrick Lazour are brothers and music theatre writers of Lebanese descent. Their musical, We Live in Cairo, about the 2011 Egyptian Revolution, premiered at the American Repertory Theater in Cambridge, MA as part of their 2018/2019 season directed by Obie Award-winner Taibi Maga and was previously workshopped at the O’Neill National Music Theater Conference and at New York Theatre Workshop under the 2016 Richard Rodgers Award. They have developed their work during residencies at the O’Neill, Ucross, SPACE on Ryder Farm, Yaddo and the MacDowell Colony. Their new musical about cancer and its treatment through the ages, was workshopped at the Johnny Mercer Writers Colony at Goodspeed Theatre, Rhinebeck Writers Retreat and is being developed with the American Repertory Theater. Patrick and Daniel were 2015-16 Dramatists Guild Fellows and are New York Theatre Workshop Usual Suspects. Most recently, they were artists-in-residence at the American University in Cairo and are teaching artists at Lincoln Center Theater. They perform their songs live at the Boiler Room in New York City.

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