"... music is the language of beauty, the language of the One whom every living
    soul has loved."                                                           -- Hazrat Inayat Khan

"Sing a song of Glory and you will be the Glory"      -- Sufi Ahmed Murad Chisti

New CD Release and Choir news, 2005:

THE CHOIR IN 2005
photo: Shoshana Geller

Snapshot, 2002

Snapshot, 2003

Snapshot, 2002

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Many ancient and modern lineages of Sufis, and particularly the Chisti transmission, have had a deep heart-connection with music and movement as forms of prayer, praise and unfoldment of the Divinity within each one of us.  Hazrat Inayat Khan, the founder of the Sufi Order in the West, was in fact a professional musician.  In our own time many seekers of truth and light -- whether called Sufis or not -- have been inspired by the kind of music you will hear tonight.  And that inspiration has irresistibly drawn us together as a choir.  We are here not so much to perform, as to share our hearts with you in music.

The original Sufi Choir formed in 1969 among the followers of Murshid Sam Lewis (Sufi Ahmed Murad Chisti) in San Francisco, a universalist Sufi and Buddhist teacher and originator of the Dances of Universal Peace,  who had known Inayat Khan in the early part of the century. Sam told Allaudin Mathieu that he was Maestro of the choir, and the ideal match of teacher/composer/arranger and choir was made.

In 1976, Aamil joined the original Sufi Choir in its final year, and in 1978 became a member and assistant director of the second Sufi Choir, which was together until 1982.  In 1994, Aamil formed a quartet to begin singing the Sufi Choir music again; and that quartet has grown to become the New Sufi Choir.