Sayed Darwish
His family emigrated from Egypt to Australia when he was three. Initially attracted to the trumpet, he decided to learn the oud when he was eight, after seeing a movie about Egyptian musician Sayed Darwish. He is classically trained, having completed a bachelor of music at the University of New South Wales, where he was awarded a Freedman Fellowship for Classical Music. In the 2000s, he also studied in Egypt with violin player Esawi Dagher, son of the legendary violin player Abdo Dagher. During the years that followed, he spent three months a year in Egypt and learned to play other instruments: the bamboo flute nay, the Arabic zither qanun and the cello.