Winning the Frances Densmore Prize

I am thrilled to have won the Frances Densmore Prize for my article “Orientation through Instruments: The ʿūd, the Palestinian Home, and Kamīlyā Jubrān” in the world of music (new series), vol. 8, no. 1, 2019.  This prize is awarded annually by the American Musical Instrument Society for the most Read more…

New work – London premiere!

Sing no Sad Songs for Me – a cycle of pieces after the poetry of Christina Rossetti. For voice, oud, yayli tanbur, double-bass and tabla Premiered at St Ethelburga’s Centre for Peace and Reconciliation, London, on 30 June 2018 My imperialist grandfather Henry Beckles Willson was sent in 1918 to Palestine to decommission Read more…

The Storyteller of Jerusalem

The London launch of the long-awaited English translation of Wasif Jawhariyyeh’s memoirs was held at London’s Mosaic Rooms in February 2014. Jawhariyyeh’s account of Palestine in the late Ottoman and British Mandate eras is an indispensible document for historians, and also provides fantastic insights into music-making of the period. It Read more…

Orientalism and Musical Mission

In 2004 the English press—specifically newspapers that are usually rather critical, The Guardian and The Observer—covered some western classical music initiatives in Ramallah led by the celebrated conductor Daniel Barenboim. They were wildly admiring, while also reproducing imperialistic discourses about Arabs and Europe (the former in need of the latter’s civilizing missions). I Read more…

Academic teaching

I have worked in full-time academic teaching since 2000, when I began as a lecturer at the University of Bristol. I was Professor of Music at Royal Holloway, University of London until September 2019, and now I am Professorial Research Associate at SOAS, University of London. My teaching has ranged Read more…

Articles and book chapters

Articles in scholarly refereed journals ‘Bulgarian Rhythm and its disembodiment in Kurtág’s The sayings of Péter Bornemisza’, Studia musicologica XLIII/3-4 (2002), pp. 269-280. ‘To say and/or to be? Incongruence in The Sayings of Péter Bornemisza op.7’. Music Analysis 22/3 (October 2003), pp. 315-338. ‘”Behold! The long-awaited new Hungarian opera has Read more…