Jabri's mother
Asma Fayoumi is a renowned modernist artist and his father Ghassan Jabri was a director for television and theatre. Jabri took violin lessons with Riyad Sukar in
Damascus and started learning music at an early age. At the age of 19, he moved to
Poland to continue his musical education. Jabri earned his M.A. degree from the
Academy of Music in Kraków, where he studied composition with
Zbigniew Bujarski. After graduating from the Academy of Music in Kraków, he became an intern in the composition class, and also began studying symphonic conducting with the Polish composer
Krzysztof Penderecki, who had a great influence on Jabri's music. In 1997, he received an award for his earliest completed work
Two Songs for Soprano and String Orchestra. This prize was awarded at the Composers' Competition named after the Polish opera singer
Adamo Didur, traditionally held in the Polish city of
Sanok. The jury of the competition drew attention to the fresh and subtle embodiment of the synthesis of Eastern and Western traditions, as well as the depth of immersion in psychologically complex states in the music of the young Syrian composer. In 1999, Jabri took part in the international music forum for young musicians from Eastern and Western Europe "Musikwerkstatt Buckow" in Germany. In 2006 in Berlin at the festival
Young Euro Classic his
Trio Bayat for clarinet, violin and cello was performed. Creating this work in 1999, Jabri for the first time set himself the task of combining European
polyphony with
Arabic maqam. In 2012, Jabri and eleven other composers from countries around the
Mediterranean Sea were invited by the public broadcasting network
SWR in Stuttgart, Germany. Each of the participants of this project titled
Mediterranean Voices was asked to write an
A cappella vocal composition that expresses their Mediterranean identity. Further to the resulting musical performances, several
symposia were held in order to highlight the influence of life in a foreign country on the composer's biography. In 2015, Jabri made his debut at the
Linbury Studio Theatre at the
Royal Opera House in London, where excerpts from his opera
Cities of Salt were performed. The plot of
Cities of Salt is based on the 1984 novel of the same name by Jordanian writer
Abdul Rahman Munif. The impact of global geopolitical conflicts and environmental destruction on the fate of people in a particular region, artistically presented in Munif's novel, attracted the interest of Jabri and librettists
Yvette Christiansë and Rosalinda Morris. Jabri also has become one of the leading figures of the Syrian
avant-garde in academic music. His work has been associated with the organic introduction of
modernism into the classical music of the Middle East. As a result of this, the musical production of Syrian composers and musicians has successfully spread through contemporary art platforms in Western and Eastern Europe, as well as in Cairo, Dubai, Istanbul and Damascus. His works presented in these international creative networks have contributed to the international appreciation of modern Syrian classical music. This was made possible by cultural forums such as the international festival of contemporary music
Warsaw Autumn, the Days of Polish Music at the
Bilgi University in
Istanbul, Turkey, and the
Morgenland Festival in
Osnabrück, Germany. While living and working in Europe, Jabri did not break ties with
Arab culture and with his homeland Syria. In 2004, his music was performed by the
Syrian National Symphony Orchestra conducted by
Missak Baghboudarian with the participation of Syrian clarinetist
Kinan Azmeh at the inauguration of the
Damascus Opera House. == Musical works ==