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Student joins teacher in concert of Middle Eastern music
Sometimes the music student ends up playing alongside the teacher.
That will be the case when Zack Kear joins his Grammy-nominated teacher Rahim AlHaj in a trio concert on Friday, April 17, at St. Timothy’s Lutheran Church.
Kear will play the ney, an Arabic reed flute in the ensemble that also features AlHaj on oud, a Middle Eastern lute, and Issa Maluf on percussion.
Kear had taken AlHaj’s Arab music theory class when he was an undergraduate student at the University of New Mexico.
“He was so shy. I reached out to him,” AlHaj said. “I asked him if he played music, if he read music. Yes, and yes. He said he plays keyboard and wind instruments.”
Over the last years, Kear has played with AlHaj only a few times but has more frequently arranged compositions for him for various instrumental configurations.
“He’s a very talented man. He plays the ney so beautifully,” AlHaj said.
The ney, Kear said, has a thin wall, “giving it that husky, breathy sound. It’s a side-blown flute so it has a different playing technique. A standard ney has seven holes.”
He is self-taught on the instrument.
Kear, who has a master’s degree in music composition from UNM, teaches piano and voice and does a lot of piano accompaniment work for church, school and community choirs in the Albuquerque area.
AlHaj said the Friday concert will have a good deal of traditional Middle Eastern music plus his own compositions arranged for oud, ney and percussion.
Maluf’s percussion instruments include the doumbek, a goblet-shaped drum, the riq, a type of tambourine, and the def, a frame drum.
Source: www.abqjournal.com