Simon Shaheen

As a master of the traditional lute-type instrument the oud and a virtuoso violin player, Palestininan-American musician Simon Shaheen has brought Arabic music to Western ears and mixed the history and roots of his homeland with other cultures. Raised in the city of Haifa in northern Israel, his father Hikmat Shaheen was an influential musician at the heart of a vibrant musical community who began passing on his renowned expertise of the oud to Simon when he was just five years old. Simon took up the violin a couple of years later and became one of the first Palestinians to study at the Rubin Music Conservatory in Jerusalem, before discovering Western classical music through his Russian violin teacher and in 1980 he moved to New York to study at the Manhattan School of Music. New York's multi-cultural melting pot further influenced his sound and expanded his ideas, and Shaheen went on to become a key figure in the growing world music scene of the 1990s with the albums 'Taqasim', 'The Music of Mohamed Abdel Wahab' and 'Turath'. He also worked with avant-garde producer Bill Laswell, performed with a traditional Jewish klezmer band and recorded with Indian slide guitarist Vishwa Mohan Bhatt; but it was with his group Qantara that he really came to wider attention and made waves with a fusion of jazz and Middle Eastern sounds on acclaimed album 'Blue Flame' in 2001. Always a natural ambassador for his region's culture, Shaheen has founded festivals and educational programmes and lectured at Berklee College of Music, and in recent years performed with flamenco guitarist Juan Perez Rodriguez, dancer Auxi Fernandez and Moroccan singer Nidal Ibourk as Latin-fusion ensemble Zafir.

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