Linked by spirituality

The Fes Festival of World Sacred Music was created in Fez, Morocco, shortly after the Gulf War in an effort to connect different cultures via the universality of music. More recently, the festival’s mission has been extended to North America via a touring ensemble in a production titled “The Spirit of Fes: From My Soul to Your Soul, the Art of Transmission.”

On Tuesday night at UCLA’s Royce Hall, the company made a convincing effort to establish that soul-to-soul transmission with appearances by artists whose roots extended from Israel and the Palestinian territories to Morocco and North Carolina.

Appropriately, the program began with a paired invocation by Palestinian Yacoub Hussein and Israeli Gabriel Meyer, singing hymns from the Islamic and the Jewish traditions.

Despite their different sources and languages, the hymns were remarkably similar in spiritual orientation: The Islamic prayer began with, “There is no God but God”; the Jewish prayer responded with “There is none like our God, Our master, our sovereign.” The parallelism of the two underscored the theme of cross-cultural spiritual dialogue that is the core goal of the Fes Festival.

The performance of Algerian Jewish singer Francoise Atlan added another element: transcendent musicality. Singing with oud player Farid El Foulahi and percussionist Jamey Haddad, she applied her sumptuous voice to a collection of songs from the Sephardic tradition.

Combining extraordinary precision -- especially during a cadenza-like passage through the music’s modal semitones -- with engaging interpretations, Atlan was a marvel. One hopes she returns soon in a full-fledged program of her own.

Two women’s groups from distant parts of the world brought yet another intriguing slant to the evening. The Hadra des Femmes de Taroudant from southern Morocco offered music and dance movements based upon the area’s tribal traditions, joyously praising the Divine. They were followed by the Anointed Jackson Sisters -- seven siblings from North Carolina -- in a program of exuberant, foot-stomping, hand-clapping gospel songs. Despite the profound contrasts in style, the ensembles offered similar celebratory messages of spirituality.

The only odd glitch in the program was a solo performance by Haddad, who opened the second act with a gimmicky electronic trick. Using a digital loop recorder, he started with a basic percussion rhythm, adding successive percussion instruments, building a multilayered compendium of rhythm. An impressive display of virtuosity, its presence in a program of world sacred music was a bit hard to fath- om.

The closing number more than compensated, however, as the full company of musicians and singers joined for a passionate collective finale based upon a Native American traditional verse.