Salman Shukur

Oud virtuoso and composer Salman Shukur was the Head of the Music Department and Professor of Oud (the Arab lute) at the Baghdad Institute of Fine Arts for over 30 years. However, despite his long and illustrious career, Shukur made only one LP, recorded in London in 1976 at Rosslyn Hill Chapel. Shukur's compositions, while based on the Arab classical musical tradition, attempt to bridge the gap between eastern and western music, and may be described as tone-poems, embodying both free and formal variation and improvisation. Despite his being almost unknown in the western world, Shukur was to the oud as Paganini was to the violin!