Why did you decide to name the album Dandelion?
The key words for me behind the name were resilience, unpretentiousness and ‘fierce’ enchantment, traits that, to me, dandelions embody. I wrote the music of this album during difficult years where I experienced isolation, and feeling inconsequential in the big grind. Writing this music was my way of reclaiming my soul by honing my craft and creating my own resources for resilience, joy and enchantment. I was looking for a title that reflected that – a mighty dandelion grew on the sixth-floor balcony of the flat where I live.

What can you tell us about the difficulties of being a musician right now?
I don’t play or write for the oud in a traditional or classical way. Most people like to classify things to engage with them, but what I do needs to be appreciated outside of black and white expectations. The other side is how difficult it is to make a living as a self-promoting musician, let alone a migrant woman oud player who doesn’t fit into the orientalist mainstream.

Can you tell me about your time performing with the Syrian Female Oriental Takht ensemble in Syria?
It was a very formative experience for me, connecting me to the classical and traditional music of the Levant and Egypt during my conservatoire years; playing heritage music with these women musician friends felt safe, inclusive and joyful. We played a variety of vocal forms, such as poems, muwashshat, and instrumental forms like samaie, longa and tahmila. We played music by renowned Syrian composers such as Hassan Skaff and Farid al-Atrash and Egyptian composers such as Muhammed Abdul-Wahab, Riyad al-Sunbati and Mohamed al-Qassabji. The basic takht ensemble has oud, nay, qanun and percussion but we almost always had violin, viola and double bass because we wanted a fuller chamber sound, suitable for larger stages. We often performed at the Damascus Opera House as well as in theatres, community and art spaces, and we gave concerts in many other countries.

Did your studies at the Conservatoire of Damascus focus on Arabic music?
My education at the conservatoire included Azerbaijani, Western classical, Turkish and some ‘Arabic’ music. We had to navigate the different visions of different teachers and the conservatoires as a whole. The important shift for me happened after I graduated and moved to the UK. I was able to discover in isolation what I was interested in doing and that I had something of my own to create, something that doesn’t have to fit only in one specific mould or genre.

Despite the improvisatory naturalist feel of your compositions, I understand that the process is quite the opposite…
It’s not easy to describe my creative process as it’s different every time, but generally it feels like a jigsaw puzzle whereby some of the pieces are more readily there, while other elements are crafted as the big picture evolves. My composition process doesn’t move from or in one direction. As to how natural my process is, I find myself making most of my creative choices with a lot of conviction, but this always comes after a lot of reflection, experimentation and scrutiny.

One of my favourite solo oud compositions of yours is ‘Sand, Roots and Blossoms’, which combines the traditional with the contemporary…
The artist Latifah A. commissioned me to write a piece for her exhibition around the themes of memory, identity, nature and what it means to be human today. I was working with the image of an oasis and travellers in my mind. In the oud and percussion release of this piece, we used the udu because I wanted that earthy clay sound to serve the theme. For the Dandelion album, I arranged ‘Sand, Roots & Blossoms’ for oud, violin, cello and percussion – the whole album is arranged for that combination and I’m really excited about people hearing my work through that new sound.

What more can you tell us about the album?
There are seven pieces on the album: ‘Questions’, which I wrote for the Grenfell Tower Memorial Service at St Paul’s Cathedral on 14 December 2017; ‘The Pull of Time’ and ‘Enchanted Weavers’, which like ‘Sand Roots & Blossoms’, were written for visual art projects; ‘Biography of a Bubble’, in memory of a talented Syrian musician friend; and ‘Samaie’, which is my own take on a classical Arabic form. I wrote ‘Indulgence’, during lockdown in 2020; it was my first real exploration of going a bit further in my creative freedom.”

Can you tell us a little about your album launch?
For the album launch concert, I’m very excited to be playing with Hoda Jahanpour (cello), Fra Rustumji (violin) and Ant Romero (percussion), though I’ll miss the cross-continental musicians on the album – from Canada and Belgium – Andrew Chung (violin), Ben Bolt-Martin (cello) and Firas Hassan (percussion).

+ Rihab Azar will perform at Kings Place, London on April 2, 2026. Buy/listen to Dandelion at rihabazar.bandcamp.com