Rabih Abou Khalil - Live 2025

His CDs are top-class highlights in the collections of numerous music lovers, true style icons - both musically and visually! His concerts are great, highly virtuosic, world music highlights of countless festivals and concert tours. After a long wait, his CD "The Flood and the Fate of the Fish" has just been released by enja records.

Rabih Abou-Khalil is a border crosser between the worlds of traditional Arabic music, European classical music and open jazz. Like a wanderer between cultures, the oud virtuoso and composer, who was born in Lebanon and now lives in France after a long stay in Germany, combines Arabic, European and American music into a highly intelligent melange, far removed from any world music fashions. Unbiased, with an alert mind, a high level of playing and compositional competence and a good dose of humor, he succeeds in merging these often contrasting worlds in an extraordinary way.

He has gathered together big names from the world of jazz such as Charlie Mariano, Kenny Wheeler and Joachim Kühn, as well as classics such as the Ensemble Modern, the Balanescu Quartet, the Kronos Quartet and the BBC Symphony Orchestra. His work is so successful that he was awarded the Jazz Award five times in one year; in 2002 he received an honorary certificate for the German Record Critics' Award for his complete works.
His complex compositions combine Arabic meters and scales as well as distinctive improvisations. The result is fresh music, fascinatingly complex, thrillingly virtuosic and highly sensual.