Devices of Expression: Firas Zreik Speaks

Photo by Miriam Al-Hajili, courtesy of the artist.

by Stephanie Jones

In late 2019, instrumentalist and composer Firas Zreik moved from Boston to New York where, for many years, he’d dreamed of living as a working artist. And then the world shut down. “I had so many questions,” he says. “‘Should I stay? Should I leave? Should I come back home to Palestine?’ I had all the reason to go back. But, I’d been thinking about this moment for a long time.” 

Determined to secure a one-year work permit extension from his Berklee student visa, Zreik hunkered down in Brooklyn. “Had I gone home, I would have lost that privilege,” he says. “The past two years have been difficult indeed, but I was productive.” Since 2020, the internationally-acclaimed rising star on kanun recorded an EP and a full-length album, released two singles and began teaching students from all over the world, across multiple time zones. This week, he and his fellow artists will share new repertoire that spotlights the kanun in layers of technical and emotional complexity. 

The Jazz Gallery: On kanun, you revisit the baroque repertoire you’d learned playing cello, after you had been playing so much eastern traditional music. That pivot makes me curious to know how you approach the sort of modal nature of the Maqam tradition, and the kanun itself, in other styles and musical traditions. 

Firas Zreik: Ever since I was a kid, I was exposed to different kinds of music from different places in the world: Flamenco, Brazilian music, Indian music, Turkish, western classical, of course. I think a musician’s true identity is a compilation of what they listen to, rather than a geographical environment of where they grow up. Of course, that plays a huge role, but what you listen to, eventually, enters into your music, subconsciously. I was always interested to introduce the kanun to musical styles and vice versa, to introduce styles to the kanun. When I finished my studies at the conservatory, I felt pretty fluent and comfortable in my Maqam tradition. I felt very rooted in that area. So I wanted to complement it with a different vocabulary from a different side of the planet. 

Berklee is very open minded about this melting between musical cultures. It’s actually a little dangerous; you might get lost if you don’t come from a strong-rooted musical tradition, any tradition. While being there, I got exposed to many different styles. And, of course, my studies really complemented my understanding of different vocabulary, structures, forms—the whole tonal system in classical and contemporary music. I [drew] some analogies between the model Maqam traditions and chord scales and stuff like that. It was always intriguing to play different styles. 

TJG: You sort of hear interpretations of certain blues elements in Maqam. 

FZ: The blue note is that sweet spot that we always find. But yeah I think we have it, too, in the Maqam tradition—that chromatic bending from one note to the other, and the tritone that creates all the magic. Different people from different locations on the planet, they have a similar feeling toward that. 

TJG: In a recent interview you gave for the Quatertones podcast, you briefly discussed the moment you accessed your first microtone on the kanun after having played cello for three years. Can you share what that felt like for you, and why that experience is so significant in your development as an artist and as a person? 

FZ: Playing the piano or the cello, or any kind of well-tempered instrument that follows that 12-tone series, for so long, while passively consuming music that has so many microtones—folk music or classical music in Egypt or Lebanon or Palestine, even pop music back home—that has all these different scales, I feel at home listening to it. Even before I knew what they were as a musician, as a passive listener, they were embedded in me. [I wasn’t] able to play them for some ambiguous reason. I wasn’t aware of it at the time.

But then suddenly, I started playing the kanun. And the kanun is very visual; it’s like a piano, in that it’s laid out and every string has a different tone. And you have this mechanism of different levers, or what we call mandals or urabs in Arabic. It’s visual. You shorten or elongate the string by attaching the string, like a left finger on a guitar. So if you raise the full set, you get the sharp sound and if you flatten it, you get the flat sound, and right in the middle is the natural. But then you got the in-betweens which is the quartertones. And seeing that, visually, and hearing it on the kanun and being able to transcribe whatever folks songs I like from back home, that was priceless. Definitely. Suddenly, I can fully express myself, fully express my environmental music, my cultural music, my identity. It felt like home. 

TJG: You play with many different artists of different styles. How has your ability to communicate that traditional language from your own culture, on your selected instrument, informed your current approach to improvising? 

FZ: The Maqam tradition is heavily improvised. When I say that, I mean there isn’t much instrumental repertoire; it’s mostly a vocal tradition. So the instrumentalists either comp or accompany the singer, or they improvise. That’s where the virtuosic side of a musician shines, really, in the Maqam tradition. Improvisation is where it’s at. There’s a whole genre called taqsim which is improvisational aspect of Maqam.

So [my] listening to so many of these amazing instrumentalists from the 20th century improvising, then transcribing them, then developing my own phrases and my own vocabulary while combining it with my knowledge of the Maqam, has really shaped this as my number-one expressive device. That kind of made it easy for me to [break] into the jazz tradition, just to study it, study the vocabulary, because it’s heavily improvised. It’s heavily oral—you have to transcribe it, to listen, to imitate. What you see on the lead sheet is not what’s really being played. So I think that feeling shaped me tremendously as a musician. 

TJG: You have this beautiful EP Solo that you released almost a year ago now. I found myself reminded of a piece I’d read on older people experiencing emotion in degrees of complexity—they might feel immense happiness that’s tinged with pain and longing. Your music feels like the sonic version of that concept. There’s even complexity in the response I have when I’m listening. I imagine the capacity of the instrument lends itself to that depth of musical exploration. 

FZ: That was beautifully phrased, I appreciate that. Definitely. I think every musician has their own unique relationship with their instrument, and they can brilliantly express their thoughts on it. This relationship, for me, manifests on the kanun. It’s basically like a device, a communicational language. But the thoughts themselves come from within. I could have trained on a different instrument. And I’m not sure I would write the same music or be the same musician I am today. So I don’t know how much the instrument played a role in that. But I think, essentially, a big part of it comes from within.

But the kanun definitely complements expressing these thoughts. You can comp, you can play lead lines, you can play grooves, you can play chords—you can play double octaves at once, a privilege that most instruments don’t have aside from the piano or the harp. So the kanun has certain advantages. 

To answer your question, yeah. I think, definitely, the kanun helps in bringing out that expression which you phrased beautifully. That specific record came out of the depths of lockdown. It wasn’t even on the agenda to create. I had originally intended to record my album with a full octet. Last February, I finally got together with my fellow musicians and we recorded an album which is set to be released this spring, hopefully. 

TJG: Shall we talk about the record, or save that for a future interview? 

FZ: I think mostly what I’ll be playing at The Jazz Gallery will be coming from that album plus other compositions, recent or old. But mostly what I’m proud about is that the album features the kanun as a lead instrument in a full instrumental setting. All the compositions are original, and the rhythm section and other parts of the band are complementing this beautiful meeting between Maqam and other languages which are embodied in me, ever since I was a kid, that are a reflection of everything I heard, everything I consumed as a musician, as a listener. I’m hoping people can like it, even non-musicians. 

There’s so much loneliness being a musician right now. In order to release an album, there are so many questions that need to be answered: What kind of format? Do you release a single first? Digital or vinyl? Should we do vinyl if CD is dead? Should we do a music video? You’re putting that together with other logistics and COVID, [figuring] when is the best time to release. The musical aspect has been taken care of and the post-production’s already done. It’s just packaging and marketing. It’s painful to call your art a product but, essentially, you have a final outcome of something that is going to be consumed. 

TJG: There are no artists who have come before you who can say, “This is how I navigated coming out of that last pandemic.” No one has had to consider it before. 

FZ: It’s not just the pandemic. It’s the whole digitalization of music, streaming and the fall of CDs. It’s created an inflation of music. Virtually anyone with a $100 mic can record some music and upload it on Spotify. The more you have of something, the less valuable it becomes. At the same time, taking CDs down basically canceled the only physical product that a musician can sell. So it’s a strange period to navigate in general. 

TJG: Earlier today you mentioned the online teaching you began offering in 2020. 

FZ: I got students from the Arab world, from Europe, from the United States, from back home. It was great. I had to navigate between three or four different time zones in order to do my schedule. That flattered me, and helped me have a routine at a time when time wasn’t really a thing. And it was my main income for a year and a half. 

TJG: Can we jump back for a second? During your Lockdown Sessions performance for the Gallery, you were, as was everyone, at home with your instrument. You had the sort of forced opportunity to spend lots of time with your kanun; do you feel you made some new discoveries about the instrument and your relationship with it as a result of the lockdown? 

FZ: I think so, yeah. It was the first time I had the instrument for myself, without being a college student, without being a kid in high school, not really being fully a freelance musician because everything was in lockdown. So it was a very unique sort of time, like a whole year of artist residency. So I developed a stronger relationship with the instrument and with music creation in general. As bad as it was, as harsh as it was for musicians, I feel like part of us, and I think many people agree, found some peace in that lack of stress, the laziness in it, to enjoy being, just being. Creation needs inspiration and inspiration for me comes from doing continuous hours of nothing first. I can read, I can walk, I can meditate. Then, after that, the magic suddenly starts to happen. I wish we could have, every year, like one month of lockdown [laughs]. 

TJG: Then we wouldn’t have to apply to residencies. 

FZ: I know, right?

TJG: I would be remiss if I didn’t ask you about what it felt like for you to become, over time, an artistic peer of your mother, the esteemed Amal Murkus. 

FZ: [Laughs] usually that’s the first question. 

TJG: Well that must have been a psychological transition for you. 

FZ: It was. Growing up in a musical house was really magical. I loved it—going to studios or rehearsals or concerts. That was my first exposure to this kind of lifestyle. And that translated to how supportive the family was in teaching music or learning music or pursuing music as a career.

Then we started working together. I think the first concert I did with her was when I was 17. It was a special feeling at the time. I started playing with her locally and then I went to Europe with her for concerts. I was still young and it gave me tremendous experience and confidence as a musician.

But as I grew, and I went to college, I started really writing songs for her, composing and producing, eventually becoming the musical director of her band. So one part of that was great. The other part was very tricky. When we talk, it’s very easy to get lost between the mother-son relationship and the colleague relationship. We’ve been working on that, mainly by my initiative: If you want to talk to me about work or a song or a concert, send me an email. Sometimes we have Zoom calls specifically for work, sometimes we have them as mother and son. We’ve been finding that balance. But I think the hardest part is when I’m home. I wake up and she’s already talking about work. 

TJG: [Laughs.] 

FZ: Imagine living with your client, right? You know, if you wake up and you find an email from a client, you first have coffee, you chill and then you answer it at your own pace. Now imagine that your client is in your living room [laughs]. It’s very tricky. I had to draw some guidelines to navigate this dynamic, but it’s really a privilege. I really love it, not just because she’s my mother but because she’s a fantastic artist and I’m proud to work with her. 

TJG: What’s got you most excited about this Gallery performance with these particular artists? 

FZ: Well first, being on stage [laughs]. Two, this specific concert was supposed to happen two years ago. This is the third year in a row we’ve tried to make it. The first time, it got canceled because I broke my wrist; the second time, because of lockdown. So I feel like it’s time. I have tremendous respect for The Jazz Gallery and its community and the musicians who play there and the progressive mindset they promote. I’m mostly excited because the audience is very tasteful. They see all these heavyweights play there daily or weekly or monthly. So being there seems like a great privilege yet a great responsibility.

I’m going to try to be as sincere as possible by presenting my musical identity. I’m not trying to pretend I’m something I’m not [laughs]. A lot of colleagues who come from different musical backgrounds and then start using the word “jazz,” I feel like that can be very misleading. It’s a misuse of the word because it’s a very deep tradition, culture, language, mindset. What I know about it, in what I’ve studied and in execution, doesn’t make me native with this vocabulary. So I have tremendous respect for it. And it’s right there in the title: The Jazz Gallery [laughs], so it’s something to keep in mind. Other than that, I’m just excited to feature my music and be able to play with the other musicians on stage at such a nice venue as The Jazz Gallery. 

Firas Zreik plays The Jazz Gallery on Saturday, February 19, 2022. The group features Mr. Zreik on kanun, Ramio Marziani on guitar, Jemina Brechoire on piano, Pietro Gennenzi on bass, Gilbert Mansour on percussion and Clemens Graßmann on drums. Sets are at 7:30 and 9:30 P.M. EDT, $15 general admission (FREE for members), $25 limited cabaret seating ($10 for members), LIVESTREAM: $20 ($5 for members). Purchase tickets here.