“Nearer to East: Contemporary Music from the Arab World and Beyond” Featuring the NY city based Ensemble Lunatics At Large. Please join me for this very cool line up of composers in Boston on February 11th. Works by Mohammed Fairouz, Zaid Jabri, Karim Al-Zand, Bushra El-Turk, Kinan Azmeh, and yours truly. Tufts campus, at the beautiful Distler Hall, 7:30 p.m. For more info. click here.
Please join me on Saturday February 25th for the USA premiere of my new work “Abu Jameel’s Daughter.” Co-commissioned by Al-Bustan Seeds of Culture and the France based Alba Ensemble, “Abu Jameel’s Daughter” is work for narrator and chamber group based on an old Arab folk tale. A foolish young prince, a girl who dreams of life in the palace and seven Djinn sisters all come to life in this dramatic and imaginative modern retelling of an ancient tale. Also, on the program will be my clarinet quartet “Buhur” featuring clarinetist Kinan Azmeh, selections from film scores and other works.
The past few months saw the completion of music for two documentary films and incidental music. You can excerpts from my score to Julia Bacha’s film “My Neighborhood”, incidental music to “Arabian Nights”, and “The Iran Job.”
The Boston Globe reviewed the May 15th performance of my oratorio “The Son of Man.” “The music… is pitched toward the impassioned, adapting Arabic-derived scales into a rich, heavily perfumed chromaticism, affording both eerie atmosphere and high-impact drama. Moment to moment, [Roustom's] invention is prolific.” Read the full article here.
“Roustom’s six settings of poems by Kahlil Gibran from his collection of poetry, Jesus, the Son of Man, are supremely dramatic” Boston Music Intelligencer
The Boston Music Intelligencer reviews the premiere of “The Son of Man.” The next performance will take place on May 15th at 3 p.m. at the Church of the Covenant in Boston, MA. Details here.
My score for Julia Bacha’s excellent and award-winning documentary Budrus is now available online.
