It fills us with pride and happiness to see our friend and colleague Ahmad Khazal performing with the Middle Eastern Music Ensemble of the University of Chicago Department of Music. This group presents three shows during the year, where the first half concert is for Turkish music, the half-year concert is for Arabic and the end of the year is for Persian music.
For the third year in a row, our colleague Ahmed participated in all the band’s concerts, and this year he distinguished himself in his half-year concert for Arabic music by playing and singing two Iraqi songs.
The band is made up of 50 musicians, all of whom are students and volunteers who love oriental music, and the leader of the band is one of the university’s teachers, and there is also a women’s choir that performs Arabic songs, and they are not Arabs. To sing high with the Arabic music in a theater that can accommodate more than 500 people.
As for our colleague Ahmed, he is a player of an instrument called Santoor. Which go back to 2500 BC, The earliest sign of it comes from Assyrian and Babylonian stone carvings (669 B.C.)the first civilization known to use the santoor are the Babylonians who embodied the Santoor in their historical epics such as the epic of Gilgamesh with the presence of engraved on the clay plates. Ahmed was able to play this instrument from his childhood, as he was a student at the famous School of Music and Ballet in Baghdad, Music Department. We wish our dear colleague Creativity and progress.