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 decade, 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. This season, he appears alongside Alena Jabarine in her lecture performance Der letzte Himmel at Berliner Ensemble. At the Pierre Boulez Saal, Bakr Khleifi has been heard several times with Misagh Joolaee, in a solo recital, and as a teacher and performer for a digital learning program on Arabic song.

May 2026

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, appearing at the Pierre Boulez Saal and the Rudolstadt Festival, among other venues. Misagh Joolaee has released three solo albums to date, all of which have received the German Record Critics' Award, as has his 2025 debut album with Trio Joolaee, Morgenwind.

May 2026