Confessions of an oudist…

A lifelong guitarist in folk, rock and (very modest) jazz contexts, I started a serious study of the ud/oud in 2017 under the guidance of Ramy Adly (a student of the Arabic/Iraqi school of Naseer Shamma). With Ramy, I spent years studying the Arabic/Iraqi system on a floating bridge Iraqi-style oud, with an exploration of the musics of Egypt, Iraq, Lebanon, and Syria. During the 2023-24 academic year, I studied Turkish ud, makam (the modal system) and Ottoman classical music with Turkish ud master Yurdal Tokcan in Istanbul, Türkiye according to the traditional meşk (apprenticeship) system. I currently play a Turkish ud built at the Luteart workshop in Istanbul, by former luthiers of the famed Faruk Turunz workshop.