BAKR KHLEIFI & MISAGH JOOLAEE

How did you and your musical partner for this concert, Misagh Joolaee, come to meet?

We met here in Berlin, where we both live. But the story goes back to the time when I was a student in Sweden and used to play with Iranian musicians. That’s how I was introduced to Iranian music culture. There are many similarities between my music, which is part of my Palestinian background, and Persian music. Once a friend told me that there was a kamancheh player, so we ended up playing together. It turned out there are common things in our musical experience, such as that we both studied western classical music. So what comes out of our collaboration is always a mix.

Bakr Khleifi

Bakr Khleifi was born in Jerusalem and received lessons from the renowned oud player Ahmad al-Khatib from the age of six. Over the following ten years, his teachers on the oud included Simon Shaheen and Samir Joubran. At the age of 15, he started learning the double bass, joining Daniel Barenboim’s West-Eastern Divan Orchestra just one year later. He subsequently studied world music with a focus on the oud at the University of Gothenburg and completed a master’s degree in double bass performance at the Buchmann-Mehta School of Music at Tel Aviv University. Performances as a double bassist and oud virtuoso have taken him across Europe, to his native Palestine, to North and South America, and to Asia. He was recently heard at the Pierre Boulez Saal alongside recorder player Stefan Temmingh in the concert project Songs of Travel and served as a teacher and performer for the hall’s digital learning program on Arabic song.

Misagh Joolaee

Misagh Joolaee grew up in the northern Iranian province of Mazandaran and began his musical training at the age of eight on the violin, winning several awards at prestigious competitions. At the same time, he also learned setar, tar, and kamanche and received training on the piano and in the classical European music tradition. Today he works with a variety of artists from different traditions and countries. He has performed as a soloist in Armenian composer Awet Terterjan’s Fifth Symphony with the Staatsorchester Braunschweig, on tour in the Netherlands with Cappella Amsterdam, and in Marie-Ève Signeyrole and Keyvan Chemirani’s music theater project Negar at Deutsche Oper Berlin. In 2021, he founded the Joolaee Trio together with pianist Schaghajegh Nosrati and percussionist Sebastian Flaig, performing at the Rudolstadt Festival, among others. Misagh Joolaee has released three albums to date, all of which have received the German Record Critics' Award.