1- The Abu Dhabi Music and Arts Foundation turns 30 as its flagship festival opens Saturday.
2- Founder Huda Alkhamis-Kanoo started it as a single desk inside the Kanoo Group’s offices.
3- The foundation now co-commissions opera and ballet with Paris, Madrid, Barcelona and Seoul institutions.
The latest:
The UAE National Orchestra opens Abu Dhabi Festival at Etihad Arena on Saturday, marking 30 years since the Abu Dhabi Music and Arts Foundation was founded. Founder Huda Alkhamis-Kanoo told The National the organisation began as a small desk at the Kanoo Group’s Abu Dhabi offices, with early programmes funded by her and her husband before any public or private backing was sought.
Details:
• The origins: Alkhamis-Kanoo said she set up Admaf to widen access to culture already anchored in Abu Dhabi’s Cultural Foundation and National Theatre, both now on the heritage register. Early work involved going into public schools, organising buses and bringing pupils to concerts, operas and ballets.
• The funding: The founder said she and her husband, businessman and painter Mohamed Abdul Latif Kanoo, financed much of the early activity themselves. She said she could not ask for public or private funds before knowing whether the model would work, and did not disclose the initial outlay.
• The resistance: Some families questioned the purpose of the school excursions, particularly where university-age women needed permission to attend, Alkhamis-Kanoo said. Her response, she recalled, was to invite the parents along and let their daughters watch and hear something new.
• The festival: Abu Dhabi Festival launched in 2004 as what Alkhamis-Kanoo described as a natural extension of existing work, pairing major performances with school visits, workshops, talks and masterclasses. Before Emirates Palace became a main venue, her own home served as backstage and storage space for visiting artists.
• The names: Placido Domingo, the Mariinsky Ballet and Orchestra, the London Symphony Orchestra, Al Jarreau and Natalie Cole all appeared during the festival’s first decade. Many made side trips to schoolchildren, including in Liwa, where Alkhamis-Kanoo said pupils often had no instruments of their own.
• The co-commissions: The first came in 2009, when the festival joined Manchester International Festival and Holland Festival to commission a portable concert pavilion designed by Zaha Hadid. Later productions include Verdi’s Aida with Madrid’s Teatro Real in 2022 and Debussy’s Pelleas et Melisande with Opera national de Paris in 2025.
• The Seoul exchange: A reciprocal partnership with Seoul Museum of Art brought 48 works by 29 Korean artists to Manarat Al Saadiyat in May 2025. That December, a second exhibition took more than 110 works by 48 UAE-based artists, 33 of them Emirati, to Seoul.
• The measure: Alkhamis-Kanoo said festivals move airports, hotels, buses and taxis, but argued the lasting return is influence and creativity rather than revenue. On ticket sales, she said: “You do not measure culture by ticket sales.”
• The opening night: The UAE National Orchestra, created in 2025, performs at Etihad Arena on October 10 at 8pm, with tickets starting at Dh225. Alkhamis-Kanoo pointed to Louvre Abu Dhabi, NYU Abu Dhabi Arts Centre and Saadiyat Cultural District institutions as evidence of the sector’s growth.
Background:
Alkhamis-Kanoo grew up in Beirut, where she said her mother cooked with music playing and her father hosted poets and thinkers. She has rebuilt in her Abu Dhabi home a roughly 200-year-old Levantine majlis, moved after conflict put the original house at risk.
Between the lines:
The co-commissioning model she describes is as much a training channel as a programming one: Emirati placements, workshops and performances abroad are attached to productions staged with Teatro Real, the Liceu and the Paris opera. That reframes a festival line-up as knowledge transfer, which is also why she resists ticket sales as the metric — the return she names arrives after the run ends.
What’s next
Abu Dhabi Festival’s full 2026 programme follows Saturday’s opening concert at Etihad Arena. Whether the Seoul Museum of Art partnership produces a third exchange exhibition, and where the next international co-commission lands, remain the clearest markers of reach.
