Featured UBC Alumni: Zaytoun by UBC Music alum Haitham Haidar (BMus‘13)
Release: August 2025 on Athene
Description:
Tenor Haitham Haidars debut solo album Zaytoun (meaning Olive in Arabic) is a captivating collection of beautiful Baroque and Arabic songs, interlaced with poetry and musical improvisations, an exploration of the intersection between Baroque and Arabic music. Whether it be through instrumentation, ornamentation, or vocal production, Zaytoun highlights the natural connections between what we generally view as separate worlds. Haidar pairs Baroque arias and songs by Monteverdi, Purcell and Bach, with the traditional Arabic songs which were his first introduction to music. He has added Arabic instrumentation to some of these Baroque standards, and even translated a Bach aria into Arabic, incorporating Arabic style into the Baroque structure. Alongside the music, are three poetry tracks (from Gibran Khalil Gibrans The Prophet) read over beautifully performed oud improvisation by Abdul-Wahab Kayyali. These tracks (prelude, intermezzo, and postlude) help present the music to follow and shape Haidars narrative of his own immigrant story in the unique intertwining of Arabic and Baroque music.