There's Sheik of Araby, Raymond Scott's Twilight in Turkey, Duke Ellington's Caravan (composed by Juan Tizol), Larry Clinton's Strictly for the Persians, Albert Ketelbey's In a Persian Market (recorded by Sammy Davis, Jr.!), Abe Olman's Egyptia which Sidney Bechet played and copyrighted as his own piece called Egyptian Fantasy. And how about Charles Shavers' Dawn on the Desert, which was recorded by John Kirby Sextet, Tommy Dorsey and even Art Blakey! We'll be playing all of these pieces. The common denominator is an inexplicable fascination with Arabic, Turkish and Persian music and culture. Yes, this fake Middle Eastern music is kitsch, but the more decades we are from its original creation, the more these pieces reveal musical treasures. The way I arrange them and the way the band will play 'em (Tom Olin, Deborah Weisz, Ric Becker, Jared Dubin, Chris Bacas, Lisa Parrott, Dave Smith, Petros Klampanis, Syberen Van Munster, Jacob Teichroew, Jackie Coleman, Mark Morgan, Danny Wolf and yours truly) will add more layers of cultural complexity. And thanks to 21st century warfare and politics (and I say this completely facetiously) we Americans know a lot more about the Middle East landscape than these mid-century songwriters and composers did. For them, the Middle Eastern lands represented exoticism and sensuality; for us, they are our past and future battlefields.