- Fadi Freij
- Wanees Zarour
Palestinian musician and composer Wanees Zarour has been a fixture on Chicago’s international music scene for more than a decade, adapting his fluency on the violin and the buzuq (a long-necked Arabic lute related to the Greek bouzouki and the Turkish saz) for a wide variety of musical traditions from the Middle East and the Mediterranean. For the last four years he’s led the well-regarded Middle Eastern Music Ensemble at the University of Chicago (taking over for oudist Issa Boulos in 2010), leading the group through a broad traditional repertoire, but as the musician’s debut album proves, his personal aesthetic is even broader. He celebrates the release of Quarter to Midnight with a performance at Constellation on Saturday night.
Correction: Wanees Zarour plays a Turkish oud rather than a buzuq on “Sama’i.”
