My profile of Kareem Roustom came out in the Tufts Journal today. Link to the story here.
Kareem is a rising star - a multi-talented composer and musician who works in many musical genres. He composes everything from pop-star arrangements to classical concert music, film scores and choral works. He also does arrangements of classical and folkloric Arab music and leads the Tufts University Arabic Music Ensemble. He graciously let me sit in on oud with the group this past winter semester - and it was a pleasure to see him in action. We had our recital last Sunday. We shared the stage with the Tufts Klezmer Ensemble, which was a hoot since we had to fit into the right half of the stage, pie wedge style! We loved the pieces we learned from Beth Bahia Cohen who subbed for Kareem in a couple of sessions. She taught us several songs by ear in the old Middle Eastern tradition. We really sounded fine on those songs, since we'd internalized them so directly. It feels good to have this story picked up and out in the world. Kareem has some incredible projects coming down the pike...the film score for Mosque in Morgantown, and Amreeka. Check him out on his MySpace page.
Note: Photo by Alonso Nichols
