Oud
Kamancheh
Palestinian-born Bakr Khleifi and Misagh Joolaee from Iran—both based in Berlin—explore the commonalities and differences of Arabic and Persian music through a dialogue of their instruments oud and kamancheh. They perform improvisations and original compositions inspired by the maqam and dastgah traditions as well as by Western classical music.
How did you and your musical partner for this concert, Misagh Joolaee, come to meet?
We met here in Berlin, where we both live. But the story goes back to the time when I was a student in Sweden and used to play with Iranian musicians. That’s how I was introduced to Iranian music culture. There are many similarities between my music, which is part of my Palestinian background, and Persian music. Once a friend told me that there was a kamancheh player, so we ended up playing together. It turned out there are common things in our musical experience, such as that we both studied western classical music. So what comes out of our collaboration is always a mix.
How would you describe the music you play?
I would compare it to a language. There’s a mother tongue, which dominates mostly, and there are other languages that start playing parts as you learn more, they jump in and merge. At some point we decided to play in a classical way, meaning the Middle Eastern classical way, traditional Persian music and maqam music. But we always tend to break the norms, we like to explore other dimensions, including counterpoint, and to expand rhythms. And the same applies to different modes—we don’t use them in orthodox ways. We don’t play by the book, we’d like to create a new book. A lot of themes and ideas connect in our playing, which includes both compositions and improvisation.
Whose compositions are they?
Both Misagh’s and mine. There are many ways to mix musical worlds, and ours reflect our own experience, so it’s very personal. Someone else with the same combination of background elements might come up with something completely different. The music really functions as language. It’s an experiment, which you might call modern. The music we make is for this time, there’s no nostalgia for the past.
You’re both composers and performers, which is not that common in Western classical music…
For me, and I believe for Misagh as well, the idea of being a composer without performing is not something I’m keen on. Playing is an important part of it. That’s why I admire someone like Jörg Widmann. He still plays clarinet, he’s in touch with the physical act of making music. It’s a completely different thing from sitting at your computer and writing notes.
Is there anything in particular you’d like listeners to pay attention to during your concert?
It’s worth focusing on rhythms. Audiences don’t need to know what these are, but they should try and observe how the rhythm establishes the momentum, the groove. It’s not always obvious. For those who are familiar with different modes, I would also recommend listening to the different textures we come up with. There are a lot of themes and improvisations on modes. What also might be interesting is that we play without a percussion instrument, which usually is important for both our musical cultures. So we’ll be doing a lot of percussion work to establish the groove. We might use our own instruments in a percussive way—I’m not sure yet that will happen, but it’s a possibility.
Speaking of instruments, the oud is not the only one you’ve mastered. You also played double bass, including as a member of the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra. How did it shape your approach to music?
I don’t really play double bass anymore, although I still love it. Part of the reason I took it up was because I wanted to learn new music, by which I mean Western classical music, which was new to me at the time. I knew something about it but I wasn’t really familiar with it before I joined the Divan, and I wanted to learn classical music through an instrument. That’s how you get to understand harmony, counterpoint, and all of that. So of course it shaped my way of making music, especially playing with Daniel Barenboim. It’s a completely different approach from what we do in this concert. It also taught me a lot about different types of sound and its qualities and how they function. That’s what I mean—once you’re exposed to this kind of music, it becomes part of who you are and suddenly emerges when you don’t expect it.
Interview: Wioleta Zochowska
Bakr Khleifi
Bakr Khleifi was born in Jerusalem and received lessons from the renowned oud player Ahmad al-Khatib from the age of six. Over the following ten years, his teachers on the oud included Simon Shaheen and Samir Joubran. At the age of 15, he started learning the double bass, joining Daniel Barenboim’s West-Eastern Divan Orchestra just one year later. He subsequently studied world music with a focus on the oud at the University of Gothenburg and completed a master’s degree in double bass performance at the Buchmann-Mehta School of Music at Tel Aviv University. Performances as a double bassist and oud virtuoso have taken him across Europe, to his native Palestine, to North and South America, and to Asia. He was recently heard at the Pierre Boulez Saal alongside recorder player Stefan Temmingh in the concert project Songs of Travel and served as a teacher and performer for the hall’s digital learning program on Arabic song.
Misagh Joolaee
Misagh Joolaee grew up in the northern Iranian province of Mazandaran and began his musical training at the age of eight on the violin, winning several awards at prestigious competitions. At the same time, he also learned setar, tar, and kamanche and received training on the piano and in the classical European music tradition. Today he works with a variety of artists from different traditions and countries. He has performed as a soloist in Armenian composer Awet Terterjan’s Fifth Symphony with the Staatsorchester Braunschweig, on tour in the Netherlands with Cappella Amsterdam, and in Marie-Ève Signeyrole and Keyvan Chemirani’s music theater project Negar at Deutsche Oper Berlin. In 2021, he founded the Joolaee Trio together with pianist Schaghajegh Nosrati and percussionist Sebastian Flaig, performing at the Rudolstadt Festival, among others. Misagh Joolaee has released three albums to date, all of which have received the German Record Critics' Award.
