Palestinian musician and composer Wanees Zarour has been a fixture on Chicago's international music scene for more than a decade, adapting his fluency on the violin and the buzuq (a long-necked Arabic lute related to the Greek bouzouki and the Turkish saz) for a wide variety of musical traditions from the Middle East and the Mediterranean. For the last four years he's led the well-regarded Middle Eastern Music Ensemble at the University of Chicago (taking over for oudist Issa Boulos in 2010), leading the group through a broad traditional repertoire, but as the musician's debut album proves, his personal aesthetic is even broader.…
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