Firas Zreik

Firas Zreik is a Palestinian Kanun player, composer, arranger, and educator based in New York City. He started playing music at an early age, when his talent quickly accelerated and gained local and then national reputation, after winning first prize at The Nazareth Competition for Musical Talents. At the age of 18 years old, Firas received a full presidential scholarship from Berklee College of Music - their most prestigious award, where he studied for five years, graduating with two bachelor degrees in Performance & Jazz Composition with high distinction. He has worked, recorded & performed with international artists from the highest caliber, such as Roger Waters, Shankar Mahadevan, Shreya Goshal, Simon Shaheen, Bassam Saba, Amal Murkus, Fabrizio Cassol, Amir Al-Saffar, Aynur Dogan, Raghu Dixit, Marwan Khoury, Elias Karam, Abeer Nehmeh and many more. In addition, he performed all over the United States, Europe & the Middle East, both as a Kanun player and as a musical director in some of the most prestigious venues and festivals such as Boston Symphony Hall, Lincoln Center, Carthage International Festival, Savannah Music Festival, Institut de Mont Arabe, Teatro Mediterraneo, Festival d’Aix-en-Provence, Smithsonian Museum, Palais des Congrès, Berklee Performance Center, The Jazz Gallery, Nuoro Jazz Festival and many more. He has so far released two original singles and one EP for solo Kanun, and he’s currently releasing his first full original album with his band.