Background
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.
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Basel Rajoub
Edit ProfileCareer
Basel"s music has hints of jazz mixed with eastern rhythms in addition to piano and brass. 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.
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. 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.
Achievements
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He recently performed with the Syrian singer Lena Chamamyan and they won the Radio Monte Carlo award in September 2006. 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.
