Rabih Abou-Khalil (, born August 17, 1957) is an

oud The oud ( ; , ) is a Middle Eastern short-neck lute-type, pear-shaped, fretless stringed instrument (a chordophone in the Hornbostel–Sachs classification of instruments), usually with 11 strings grouped in six courses, but some models have ...

player and

composer A composer is a person who writes music. The term is especially used to indicate composers of Western classical music, or those who are composers by occupation. Many composers are, or were, also skilled performers of music. Etymology and def ...

born in Lebanon, who combines elements of

Arabic music Arabic music () is the music of the Arab world with all its diverse List of music styles, music styles and genres. Arabic countries have many rich and varied styles of music and also many linguistic Varieties of Arabic, dialects, with each countr ...

with

jazz Jazz is a music genre that originated in the African-American communities of New Orleans, Louisiana, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Its roots are in blues, ragtime, European harmony, African rhythmic rituals, spirituals, h ...

classical music Classical music generally refers to the art music of the Western world, considered to be #Relationship to other music traditions, distinct from Western folk music or popular music traditions. It is sometimes distinguished as Western classical mu ...

, and other styles. He grew up in

Beirut Beirut ( ; ) is the Capital city, capital and largest city of Lebanon. , Greater Beirut has a population of 2.5 million, just under half of Lebanon's population, which makes it the List of largest cities in the Levant region by populatio ...

and moved to

Munich Munich is the capital and most populous city of Bavaria, Germany. As of 30 November 2024, its population was 1,604,384, making it the third-largest city in Germany after Berlin and Hamburg. Munich is the largest city in Germany that is no ...

, Germany, during the

Lebanese Civil War The Lebanese Civil War ( ) was a multifaceted armed conflict that took place from 1975 to 1990. It resulted in an estimated 150,000 fatalities and led to the exodus of almost one million people from Lebanon. The religious diversity of the ...

in 1978.

Musical style

Abou-Khalil studied the

at the Beirut conservatory with oudist Georges Farah. After moving to Germany, he studied classical flute at the Academy of Music in

under Walther Theurer. In his compositions and live concerts, he combines elements of

with

, rock, or classical music, and has earned praise as "a

world music "World music" is an English phrase for styles of music from non-English speaking countries, including quasi-traditional, Cross-cultural communication, intercultural, and traditional music. World music's broad nature and elasticity as a musical ...

ian years before the phrase became a label". — According to a review of his concert in ''The Guardian'' of 2002, Abou-Khalil "makes the hot,

staccato Staccato (; Italian for "detached") is a form of Articulation (music), musical articulation. In modern notation, it signifies a note of shortened duration, separated from the note that may follow by silence. It has been described by theorists and ...

Middle Eastern flavour and the seamless grooves of jazz mingle, as if they were always meant to." In a review of his 2007 album ''Songs For Sad Women,'' the BBC wrote "the characteristic blend of jazz-inflected Arabic melody with subtle rhythms combines into a hypnotic whole, as ever with Abou-Khalil’s fluent oud playing in a central role." Along with

Tunis Tunis (, ') is the capital city, capital and largest city of Tunisia. The greater metropolitan area of Tunis, often referred to as "Grand Tunis", has about 2,700,000 inhabitants. , it is the third-largest city in the Maghreb region (after Casabl ...

ian oud

virtuoso A virtuoso (from Italian ''virtuoso'', or ; Late Latin ''virtuosus''; Latin ''virtus''; 'virtue', 'excellence' or 'skill') is an individual who possesses outstanding talent and technical ability in a particular art or field such as fine arts, ...

Anouar Brahem Anouar Brahem (; born on 20 October 1957) is a Tunisian oud player and composer. He is widely acclaimed as an innovator in his field. Performing primarily for a jazz audience, he combines Arabic classical music, folk music and jazz and has bee ...

and

Dhafer Youssef Dhafer Youssef (; born 19 November 1967) is a Tunisian composer, singer and oud player. Biography Dhafer Youssef was born in Téboulba (a small village of coastal Tunisia); his grandfather was a muezzin. He calls the radio "the most important s ...

, he has helped establish the oud as an important instrument of

Ethno jazz Ethno jazz, also known as world jazz, is a subgenre of jazz and world music, developed internationally in the 1950s and '60s and broadly characterized by a combination of traditional jazz and non-Western musical elements. Though occasionally equa ...

and

world fusion "World music" is an English phrase for styles of music from non-English speaking countries, including quasi-traditional, intercultural, and traditional music. World music's broad nature and elasticity as a musical category pose obstacles to a u ...

. Among other musicians, Abou-Khalil has worked with ARTE Quartett (saxophone quartet),

Alexander Bălănescu Alexander Bălănescu () (born 11 June 1954) is a Romanian violinist, and founder of the Balanescu Quartet. Biography Bălănescu was born in Bucharest, and at the age of seven went to the Special School for Music there. His teachers in Romania we ...

(violin),

Luciano Biondini Luciano Biondini is an Italian jazz and folk music accordion player who has appeared on the albums of various musicians, including Gabriele Mirabassi, Fratelli Mancuso, Ivano Fossati, Samo Šalamon and Rabih Abou-Khalil. Discography ;As leader ...

(accordion),

Milton Cardona Milton Cardona (November 21, 1944 – September 19, 2014) was a percussionist, vocalist and conga player from Mayagüez, Puerto Rico. Milton Cardona made well over 1000 recordings, nine of which won Grammies. His career and was highly influence ...

(conga),

Sonny Fortune Cornelius "Sonny" Fortune (May 19, 1939 – October 25, 2018) was an American jazz saxophonist. He played soprano, alto, tenor, and baritone saxophones, clarinet, and flute. Biography He was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. Af ...

(alto saxophone),

Michel Godard Michel Godard (born October 3, 1960, Héricourt, France) is a French avant-garde jazz and classical musician. He plays tuba and the predecessor of the tuba, a brass instrument known as the serpent. Career At 18, Godard was a member of the Phi ...

(tuba and serpent),

Joachim Kühn Joachim Kurt Kühn (born 15 March 1944) is a German jazz pianist. Biography Kühn was born in Leipzig, Germany. He was a musical prodigy and made his debut as a concert pianist, having studied classical piano and composition, with Arthur Schmidt-E ...

(piano, alto saxophone),

Howard Levy Howard Levy (born July 31, 1951) is an American musician. A keyboardist and virtuoso harmonica player, he "has been realistically presented as one of the most important and radical harmonica innovators of the twentieth century." In 1988, Le ...

(harmonica),

Charlie Mariano Carmine Ugo Mariano (November 12, 1923 – June 16, 2009) was an American jazz saxophone, saxophonist who focused on the alto saxophone, alto and soprano saxophone. He occasionally performed and recorded on flute and nadaswaram as well. Biogra ...

(alto saxophone),

Gabriele Mirabassi Gabriele Mirabassi is an Italian jazz clarinetist. Career He was born in Perugia and is a graduate of the Morlacchi Conservatory. His teacher told him avoid playing jazz because it would damage his technique, so at home he learned jazz on the ...

(clarinet),

Glen Moore Glen Moore (born October 28, 1941) is an American jazz bassist, who occasionally performs on piano, flute and violin. Moore was born in Portland, Oregon, United States. His performing career began at age 14 with the Young Oregonians in Portlan ...

(bass),

Mark Nauseef Mark Nauseef (born June 11, 1953) is an American drummer and percussionist who has enjoyed a varied career, ranging from rock music during the 1970s with his time as a member of the Ian Gillan Band and, temporarily with Thin Lizzy when Brian D ...

(percussion),

Setrak Sarkissian Setrak Sarkissian ستراك سركسيان (1936 – 21 February 2017) was a Lebanese darbouka player of Armenian descent. He has won numerous awards in the Middle East and in Europe for his contributions to both traditional and modern Arabi ...

( darabukka),

Ramesh Shotham Ramesh Shotham (born May 7, 1948 in Madras, Tamil Nadu, India) is a percussionist and drummer. Life Ramesh Shotham was born in Madras, South India. He graduated with a degree in zoology from Loyola College, University of Madras. He began his musi ...

(Indian percussion),

Steve Swallow Steve Swallow (born October 4, 1940) is an American jazz bassist and composer, known for his collaborations with Jimmy Giuffre, Gary Burton, and Carla Bley. He was one of the first jazz double bassists to switch entirely to electric bass guitar. ...

(bass),

Glen Velez Glen Velez (born 1949) is a four-time Grammy winning American percussionist, vocalist, and composer, specializing in frame drums from around the world. He is largely responsible for the increasing popularity of frame drums in the United States an ...

(

frame drum A frame drum is a drum that has a drumhead width greater than its depth. It is one of the most ancient musical instruments, and perhaps the first drum to be invented. It has a single drumhead that is usually made of rawhide, but man-made mat ...

, percussion), or

Kenny Wheeler Kenneth Vincent John Wheeler, Order of Canada, OC (14 January 1930 – 18 September 2014) was a Canadian composer and trumpet and flugelhorn player, based in the U.K. from the 1950s onwards. Most of his performances were rooted in jazz, but he w ...

(

flugelhorn The flugelhorn (), also spelled fluegelhorn, flugel horn, or flügelhorn, is a brass instrument that resembles the trumpet and cornet, but has a wider, more conical bore. Like trumpets and cornets, most flugelhorns are pitched in B♭, though ...

Albums

His only album for the Munich-based label

ECM ECM may refer to the following: Economics and commerce * Engineering change management * Equity capital markets * Error correction model, an econometric model * European Common Market Mathematics * Lenstra's Elliptic curve method for factor ...

was called ''Nafas'' (1988). Since 1990, his albums have been published by

Enja Records Enja Records is a German jazz record company and label based in Munich which was founded by jazz enthusiasts Matthias Winckelmann and Horst Weber in 1971. The label's first release was by Mal Waldron, and early releases included European and Jap ...

, Munich. For ''Al-Jadida'' (1992), Abou-Khalil invited alto saxophonist

; ''Blue Camel'' (1992), featured alto saxophonist

and

player Kenny Wheeler. ''Morton's Foot'' (2004) presents

on accordion and

Sardinia Sardinia ( ; ; ) is the Mediterranean islands#By area, second-largest island in the Mediterranean Sea, after Sicily, and one of the Regions of Italy, twenty regions of Italy. It is located west of the Italian Peninsula, north of Tunisia an ...

n singer Gavino Murgia. ''Journey to the Centre of an Egg'' (2005) features a trio of oud, piano (

, who doubles on

alto saxophone The alto saxophone is a member of the saxophone family of woodwind instruments. Saxophones were invented by Belgians, Belgian instrument designer Adolphe Sax in the 1840s and patented in 1846. The alto saxophone is pitched in the key of E♭ ( ...

) and Jarrod Cagwin on drums. ''Nafas'' and ''Tarab'' make use of the

ney The ney ( ; ) is an end-blown flute that figures prominently in traditional Persian, Turkish, Jewish, Arab, and Egyptian music. In some of these musical traditions, it is the only wind instrument used. The ney has been played for over 4,500 ye ...

, the

Middle East The Middle East (term originally coined in English language) is a geopolitical region encompassing the Arabian Peninsula, the Levant, Turkey, Egypt, Iran, and Iraq. The term came into widespread usage by the United Kingdom and western Eur ...

ern end-blown flute. ''Arabian Waltz'' features Abou-Khalil's compositions for string quartet (performed by the

Balanescu Quartet Balanescu Quartet is an avant-garde String instrument, string ensemble formed in 1987. Current members are Alexander Bălănescu (violin), Yuri Kalnits (violin), Úna Palliser (viola) and Nick Holland (cello). Group history The quartet has ro ...

), along with oud,

tuba The tuba (; ) is the largest and lowest-pitched musical instrument in the brass instrument, brass family. As with all brass instruments, the sound is produced by lip vibrationa buzzinto a mouthpiece (brass), mouthpiece. It first appeared in th ...

or serpent, and frame drums. In 2008, Abou-Khalil released an album entitled "Em Português" ("In Portuguese"), where he mixes

fado Fado (; "destiny, fate") is a music genre which can be traced to the 1820s in Lisbon, Portugal, but probably has much earlier origins. Fado historian and scholar Rui Vieira Nery states that "the only reliable information on the history of fado ...

with Arabic music with the participation of the fadista

Ricardo Ribeiro Ricardo Abreu Ribeiro (born 27 January 1990) is a Portuguese professional footballer who plays as a goalkeeper for Liga Portugal 2 club Oliveirense. Club career Born in Moreira de Cónegos, Guimarães, Ribeiro joined local Moreirense FC's yout ...

TV series: Visions of Music

In 1998, Rabih Abou-Khalil hosted the television series ''Visions of Music''. This 13-part documentary series produced by EuroArts Entertainment set out to explore the blending of jazz with different music styles of the world (Caribbean salsa, Brazilian samba, Argentine tango, French musette, Spanish flamenco, Jewish klezmer, New Orleans R&B and Mississippi blues, as well as West African, South African, Indian, and Middle Eastern music) through historical

footage In filmmaking and video production, footage is raw, unedited material as originally filmed by a movie camera or recorded by a digital video camera, which typically must be film editing, edited to create a motion picture, digital video, video cli ...

and interviews with musicians by Abou-Khalil. The music of the TV-series was released on the album ''Visions of Music - World Jazz'' by Enja Records.

Discography

* ''Compositions & Improvisations'' (MMP, 1981) * ''Bitter Harvest'' (MMP, 1984) * ''Between Dusk and Dawn'' (MMP, 1987;

Enja Enja Records is a German jazz record company and label based in Munich which was founded by jazz enthusiasts Matthias Winckelmann and Horst Weber in 1971. The label's first release was by Mal Waldron, and early releases included European and Jap ...

, 1993) * ''Bukra'' (MMP, 1988; Enja, 1994) * ''Nafas'' (

, 1988) * ''Roots & Sprouts'' (MMP/Enja, 1990) * ''World Music Orchestra: East West Suite'' (Granit, 1990) * '' Al-Jadida'' (Enja, 1991) * ''

Blue Camel ''Blue Camel'' is an album by the Lebanese oud player and composer Rabih Abou-Khalil. The album fuses traditional Arabic music with jazz. It was recorded in 1992 and released on the Enja label.

'' (Enja, 1992) * ''

Tarab Tarab () is a classical Arabic music genre rooted in folk and traditional styles, popular throughout the Arab world. In its classical form, it is primarily vocal, with several genres such as adwar, qasida, mawawil, qudud, and muwashahat. Umm ...

'' (Enja, 1993) * '' The Sultan's Picnic'' (Enja, 1994) * ''

Arabian Waltz ''Arabian Waltz'' is an album by the Lebanese oud player and composer Rabih Abou-Khalil, featuring the Balanescu Quartet, which was recorded in 1995 and released on the Enja label the following year.Odd Times ''Odd Times'' is a live album by the Lebanese oud player and composer Rabih Abou-Khalil which was recorded in Germany in 1997 and released on the Enja label.Yara Yara may refer to: People * Yara (given name) * Yara (surname), a Japanese surname * Yara (Angolan footballer), Yara Lukenia F. da Costa Lima () * Yara (Brazilian footballer), Yara Silva (born 1964) * Yara (singer), Lebanese pop singer Carl ...

'' (Enja, 1998) * ''

The Cactus of Knowledge ''The Cactus of Knowledge'' is an album by the Lebanese oud player and composer Rabih Abou-Khalil which was recorded in Germany in 2000 and released on the Enja label the following year. Reception The Allmusic review by David R. Adler stated " ...

'' (Enja, 2001) * '' Il Sospiro'' (Enja, 2002) * '' Morton's Foot'' (Enja, 2003) * ''

Journey to the Centre of an Egg ''Journey to the Centre of an Egg'' is an album by the Lebanese oud player Rabih Abou-Khalil with German pianist Joachim Kühn and percussionist Jarrod Cagwin which was recorded in Germany in 2004 and released on the Enja label the following yea ...

'' (Enja, 2005) * ''

Songs for Sad Women ''Songs for Sad Women'' is an album by the Lebanese oud player and composer Rabih Abou-Khalil which was recorded in Germany in 2005 but not released on the Enja label until 2007.

'' (Enja, 2007) * ''

Em Português ''Em Português'' is an album by the Lebanese oud player and composer Rabih Abou-Khalil which was recorded in Germany in 2007 and released on the Enja label the following year.Trouble in Jerusalem'' (Enja, 2010) * ''Hungry People'' (World Village, 2012) * ''The Flood and the Fate of the Fish'', (Enja Records, 2020)

As guest musician

Chris Karrer Christoph Karrer (20 January 1947 – 2 January 2024) was a German guitarist and composer who also played saxophone, violin and oud. He was a pioneer of krautrock, playing and recording with his band Amon Düül II from 1969 when they release ...

: ''Dervish Kish'' (Schneeball/Indigo, 1990/91) * Michael Riessler: ''Heloise'' (Wergo, 1992) *

& Friends: ''Sevent''y (veraBra records, 1993) *

: ''Nude Bass Ascending'' (Intuition, 1996/97) * Ramesh Shotam: ''Madras Special'' (Permission Music, 2002)

Other

* Jakob Wertheim & Rabih Abou-Khalil: ''KopfKino'' cassette (Ohrbuch-Verlag, 1988) * ''The Jazz Club Highlights'' DVD (TDK JAZZ CLUB, 1990) * ''Rabih Abou-Khalil presents Visions of Music - World Jazz'' accompanying TV series (Enja, 1999)

References

External links

Official websiteRabih Abou Khalil at All About JazzFotos Rabih Abou Khalil & Termites at work - 2007 jazzit
* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Abou-Khalil, Rabih 1957 births Living people ECM Records artists Lebanese musicians Musicians from Beirut Modal jazz oud players Lebanese jazz musicians Lebanese oud players University of Music and Theatre Munich alumni