The drumming legend behind collaborations with Dire Straits, Madonna and Michael Jackson and the pianist compared to Herbie Hancock by The Guardian – the Hakim couple are coming to Ponta Lopud Jazz Festival
Omar Hakim and Rachel Z Hakim, whose careers have marked some of the most important musical stories of the last forty years, will open the doors of their musical world to young talents on Lopud from August 27th to 29th
The Ponta Lopud Jazz Festival is bringing to the island for the fourth edition an unusual mentoring duo, the married couple Omar and Rachel Z Hakim, whose joint life and artistic journey includes collaborations with the biggest musical names of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, from Madonna's world tours and collaborations with Michael Jackson to work on Daft Punk's Grammy-winning hit "Get Lucky". This year, the festival will take place from 27 to 29 August 2026, and young musicians from Croatia, the region and the world will have a unique opportunity to work with a couple who have lived groove and improvisation on the most demanding world stages, and are now passing this knowledge on to Lopud.
"There are no two musicians who better represent this blend of fusion, rock, pop and electronica than Omar Hakim and Rachel Z Hakim. They start from a sensibility and deep understanding of the language of jazz, and combine them with an exceptional sense of groove and soul, bringing spirituality to their music. I personally had the honor of having Rachel Z Hakim as one of my first professors at The New School for Jazz & Contemporary Music and I will never forget how much her teaching inspired me. Our participants of the Ponta Lopud Jazz Festival 2026 are in for a real surprise!" said Thana Alexa, co-founder and artistic director of the festival.
Omar Hakim grew up in a New York musical family with roots in the big bands of Duke Ellington and Count Basie, and began playing drums at the age of five, trying to emulate his father, Hasan Hakim, a trombonist who was a member of those legendary orchestras. By the age of ten, he was performing in public, distinguished by his impeccable technique, deep-rooted sense of groove, and ability to move effortlessly between acoustic jazz, funk, pop, and electronica.
The catalog of his collaborations is almost impossible to summarize, but even the incomplete list speaks for itself: George Benson, Lionel Richie, Chaka Khan, Kate Bush, Bobby McFerrin, David Bowie, Foo Fighters, Bruce Springsteen, Michael Jackson, Celine Dion, Sting, Miles Davis, Mariah Carey, Madonna, and more.
Omar Hakim i Rachel Z Hakim by Louis Myrie
Hakim has left a distinctive mark on hundreds of projects, marking several decades of popular and jazz music. A special chapter in this story is his collaboration with the legendary Dire Straits, with whom he went on a major world tour after the release of the album Brothers in Arms, one of the most successful and most visited tours of the eighties, as well as his long-term work with Madonna, which took him to all corners of the world. The nineties were also marked by his collaboration with Michael Jackson on the album HIStory (1995), and the new millennium brought one of his most recognizable musical signatures through his work on the Grammy-winning song “Get Lucky” by the electronic duo Daft Punk.
Rachel Z Hakim is a pianist and keyboardist, whose path to the top of the jazz and rock scene was equally specific, although completely different. She graduated from the New England Conservatory, and gained great recognition as a key musician in the fusion band Steps Ahead of the legendary vibraphonist Mike Mainieri, which was just the introduction to a whole series of collaborations that put her at the very top. Her role on Wayne Shorter's Grammy-winning 1995 album High Life, for which she designed complex orchestral synths and acoustic piano parts, earned her the status of a musician entrusted with the most demanding projects, and her long-term collaboration with Peter Gabriel on the Growing Up tours and her work with Stanley Clarke and Lenny White in the fusion supergroup Vertú confirmed that her talent is felt equally strongly in studio work and live performances.
As a solo artist, Rachel is building an original voice that critics regularly place alongside the great names of the jazz tradition: The Guardian has compared her improvisational spontaneity to Herbie Hancock and McCoy Tyner. The 1997 album Room of One's Own, a tribute to women in music, with arrangements by Maria Schneider and a lineup that included Regina Carter and last year's Ponta Lopud Jazz Festival resident Terri Lyne Carrington, has remained one of the most cited projects of its kind, and her thirteen acclaimed albums bear witness to a continuity that is rarely seen. Today, she is a professor of jazz and contemporary music studies at The New School in New York and a professor of jazz and electronic music at Montclair State University, where she brings the same principles to her teaching that she approaches her playing.
The joint project The Trio of OZ, which brought them together as a creative team, as well as the record label OZmosis Records, which they co-founded.
