CLEVELAND.-The Cleveland Museum of Art抯 (CMA) acclaimed VIVA! & Gala Around Town announces the first performance in its special Music of Central Asia and the Near East mini-series, with The Spiritual Sounds of Central Asia: Nomads, Mystics and Troubadours at 7:30 p.m. on October 21 at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History (CMNH).

The Spiritual Sounds of Central Asia showcases 17 musicians from Central Asia as they share their mastery of traditions at once ancient and contemporary. This is a rare opportunity to hear music from Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Qaraqalpakstan. The concert will feature a panoramic range of vocal and instrumental music accompanied by supertitles with translations of song lyrics and introductory documentary films about the featured musicians.

The artists, several of whom will make their North American debut, include the legendary Azerbaijani vocalist Alim Qasimov and his daughter Fargana; Bardic Divas, four women from Kazakhstan and Qaraqalpakstan who demonstrate the power and beauty of the female voice; and the Badakhshan Ensemble, which performs trance-inducing mystical songs from the Pamir Mountains of Tajikistan and Afghanistan.

The Spiritual Sounds of Central Asia will be preceded by the lecture Mystics, Nomads and Troubadours in Central Asian Music, presented by Theodore Levin at 6 p.m. Levin, professor at Dartmouth College, first visited Central Asia in 1974 and has been traveling there ever since. He is the author of The Hundred Thousand Fools of God: Musical Travels in Central Asia (and Queens, New York) and Where Rivers and Mountains Sing: Sound, Music, and Nomadism in Tuva and Beyond. The lecture is free with the concert ticket.

Admission to the performance is $35; $33 for CMA members. Special group and student rates are available. To purchase tickets to this event, and others in the VIVA! & Gala Around Town series, call the CMA Box Office at 1-888-CMA-0033 or on online at www.clevelandart.org/tickets. The Spiritual Sounds of Central Asia performance takes place in Murch Auditorium at CMNH, 1 Wade Oval Drive in Cleveland. Valet parking will be available for $5.