The Cairo Contemporary Music Days (CCMD) is a festival dedicated to bringing contemporary music to Egypt as well as providing a platform for cultural exchange between the European and Middle Eastern cultural scene.
The first edition of The Cairo Contemporary Music Days was held in 2011, three months after the Egyptian Revolution. The festival is a continuation of the Alexandrine Biennale, which took place in 2009 and proved very successful. Hence, the idea for an equivalent event in Cairo came to life by the director of EECMS, Sherif El Razzaz.
Since 2016 and after improved political stability, the festival hosted a large scale of activities such as the Heritage and Modernity Forum where more than 40 international renown composers and musicologists interacted with Arab music tradition as well as discussing the relation between music tradition and the global contemporary music production.
The festival collaborates with Governments, independent and Academic institutions over the last seven years and offers all its activities free of any charge. Some of the composers, conductors and ensembles participating in the Cairo Contemporary music days are: Ensemble Modern Frankfurt, Ensemble Mosaik, Neuevokalsolisten Stuttgart, Ensemble Linea, LET lithuanian ensemble Network, Tokyo Sinfonietta, BCN Barcelona and TIMF Ensemble South Korea, Composers and conductors as Jose Maria Sanchez Verdu, Oscar Bianchi, Vykintas Baltakas, Oliver Schneller, Benet Casablancas, Mateo Malondra, Ralph van Raat, Miriam Overlach, Baß Wiegers, Peter Tilling and Edd Spanjaard.
The Festival could win the support of a large number of Music and Cultural funding Bodies such as: Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation, Pro Helvetia, Ramon LIULL Institute, TIMF Music Foundation, the Arab Fund for Arts and Culture, Allianz Culture Foundation the Japan Foundation, Strecker Foundation, the Kingdom of the Netherlands ministry for Foreign Affairs and many others.