rabih abou-khalil
![Rabih Abou-Khalil 11995442](http://heroesofjazz.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/Rabih-Abou-Khalil-11995442.jpg)
Rabih Abou-Khalil (Arabic: ربيع أبو خليل, born August 17, 1957) is an oud player and composer born in Lebanon, who combines elements of Arabic music with jazz, classical music, and other styles. He grew up in Beirut and moved to Munich, Germany, during the Lebanese Civil War in 1978.
Musical style
Abou-Khalil studied the oud at the Beirut conservatory with oudist Georges Farah. After moving to Germany, he studied classical flute at the Academy of Music in Munich under Walther Theurer.
In his compositions and live concerts, he combines elements of Arabic music with jazz, rock, or classical music, and has earned praise as “a world musician years before the phrase became a label”. — According to a review of his concert in The Guardian of 2002, Abou-Khalil “makes the hot, staccato Middle Eastern flavour and the seamless grooves of jazz mingle, as if they were always meant to.”
![Iraqi musician Naseer Shamma plays the oud during rehearsals at the Iraqi National Theater in Baghdad on January 17, 2022. Long uprooted from his native Iraq, Shamma, an icon of the Arabic oud, has returned home to help rekindle the flame of Iraqi music, snuffed out by decades of conflict. (Photo by AHMAD AL-RUBAYE / AFP)](https://heroesofjazz.com/wp-content/uploads/cache/2023/08/Rabih-Abou-Khalil-11995455/3413630352.jpg)