Basel Rajoub

Basel Rajoub
باسل رجوب
Birth name Basel Rajoub
Origin Syria Aleppo, Syria
Genres Jazz, Arabic music, Arabesque music, Saxophone, Middle Eastern music
Occupation(s) Saxophonist
Composer
Arranger
Years active 2005–present
Website http://www.myspace.com/baselrajoubpage

Basel Rajoub (Arabic: باسل رجوب‎) is a Syrian musician, composer and saxophone player. He was born in Aleppo in 1981 and started his musical career performing on trumpet before joining Aleppo's conservatory where he studied eastern and European classical music, as well as jazz. Basel's music has hints of jazz mixed with eastern rhythms in addition to piano and brass. He recently performed with the Syrian singer Lena Chamamyan and they won the Radio Monte Carlo award in September 2006. Both artists gained a wide popularity in the Arab world especially after they performed Live in a number of cities like Cairo, Amman, Paris, Vienna and of course Damascus.

Rajoub played Saxophone in the British Council sponsored tour for the album "Sprinting Gazelle" by London based Palestinian singer and ethnomusicologist Reem Kelani along with two Syrian musicians: Amir Qara Jouli (violin) and Simon Mreach (percussion), in addition to three of Kelani's British band: Patrick Illingworth (drums), Oli Hayhurst (double bass) and Zoe Rahman (piano). The debut represented songs from Palestine and the diaspora in a way that seemed both modern and ancient.

Career

Aleppo-born and Swiss-based graduate of Damascus High Institute of Music, Basel is a consummate performer, skilled improviser, and highly original composer creating new music that is rooted in a thousand-year-old tradition. Basel is known for developing oriental music for the saxophone and is dedicated to helping his audience discover contemporary expression of myriad melodic modes of Arabic music. An innovator both on stage and in the studio, Basel performs as a solo artist and a leader of the Basel Rajoub Ensemble.

Rajoub performs on instruments that are not native to the Middle East, exemplifying the talent, achievement, and breadth of a rising generation of cosmopolitan Arab musicians who combine jazz, classical music, the microtonal subtleties and myriad melodic modes of Arabic music, and whose music represents a sublime mix of spontaneity and control rooted in a thousand-year-old tradition of improvisation. Such music could only have emerged from artists whose own musical journeys have zigzagged back and forth between the Middle East and the West in unique ways, creating music that is at once seamless and surprising [1]

Work

Alongside his performances in Syria in 2007[2] and 2009[3] with the Palestinian singer, Reem Kelani, Rajoub has toured with Kelani in Turkey (2009), and China (2010 & 2011).

Solo Albums

Albums

Film scores

References

  1. ↑ [BASEL RAJOUB, SAXOPHONIST, COMPOSER http://www.baselrajoub.net/biography]
  2. ↑ http://assafir.com/Article/70296
  3. ↑ http://wehda.alwehda.gov.sy/__archives.asp?FileName=43516175620090720130839