Julien Jalâl Eddine Weiss (October 18, 1953 – January 2, 2015) was a French musician, composer and the founder of  Al-Kindi Ensemble, a Sufi musical group based in Aleppo, Syria. ^[1]

Biography

Born Julien Weiss on October 18, 1953, in Paris to a Swiss-German mother and an Alsatian father, he started as a classically trained guitarist, that he had learned at the École Normale de Musique de Paris. As a student in 1976, he was fascinated by classical Arabic music when he met Munir Bachir, the Iraqi grand master of the oud (oriental lute). He then embarked on the study of this instrument and of the refined laws governing oriental micro-tonal music.

Abandoning the oud for the qanûn, a sort of oriental zither, which he learned from masters in various countries of the Middle East, Julien Weiss founded in 1983 the instrumental ensemble Al-Kindi. Initially conceived as a takht (small ensemble of soloists) devoted to Arab classical music. ^[2] Three years later, in 1986, he converted to  Islam and took the name Julien Jalâl Eddine Weiss as an homage to Jalāl ad-Dīn Muhammad Rūmī. During his career, Weiss performed at more than five hundred concerts, notably at the Théâtre de la Ville de Paris, the  Institut du Monde arabe in Paris, the Beiteddine Festival in  Lebanon, Carnegie Hall in  New York, and at  Nuits de Fourvière in  Lyon, as well as in cities such as  Hong Kong,  São Paulo, and  Washington. In 2001, he was made an Officer of the Order of Arts and Letters by the French Republic. ^[3] Weiss died of cancer on 2 January 2015 in Paris at the age of 61. He is buried in the Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris, France. ^[4]

Tributes

French novelist  Mathias Énard cited his death in his novel Boussole (translated into English as Compass).

See also

• Arabic music - Sacred and Art music
• Sufi music

References