RABIH ABOU-KHALIL

Born and raised in the cosmopolitan climate of Beirut in the sixties and seventies, Rabih Abou- Khalil learned to play the oud, the Arabian short-necked lute, at the age of four. In the Arab world this instrument is as popular as the guitar or the piano in the West and is the composer’s instrument par excellence. The Lebanese civil war forced him to leave his country in 1978 to study classical flute in the German city of Munich, where he was tutored at the Munich Academy of Music by Walther Theurer. The analytical preoccupation with the European classical tradition enabled him to grasp Arabic music from a further, theoretical position, opening his eyes to the possibility of operating simultaneously within musically divergent systems. Rabih Abou-Khalil has asserted himself as an original composer, not just because he is ahead of his time – but because he also questions what others might pursue read more...