Tribute to Ziad Rahbani by Faraj Suleiman in Abu Dhabi

This is a concert in Abu Dhabi that honours the Lebanese composer Ziad Rahbani through the music of Faraj Suleiman. Suleiman, a pianist and composer, returns to The Arts Center to perform an evening of jazz and contemporary piano that pushes at the edges of the genre.

The programme is not a straightforward run through familiar songs. Suleiman treats Rahbani as one of his major musical influences and reworks the material in his own artistic language. Each piece is re-orchestrated, re-harmonised and reshaped rhythmically, so the result reflects his compositional mindset and a musical identity that is recognisably his. The aim is a performance built from the colours and textures of his own world rather than a copy of the originals.

The concert takes place at The Red Theater, part of The Arts Center at NYU Abu Dhabi. The centre is the university's performing arts venue on Saadiyat Island, the cultural district of Abu Dhabi that is also home to several major museums and galleries. Saadiyat is a calm, spacious island of beaches and landscaped waterfront, a different pace from the city centre. For anyone living in Dubai, it is a drive of roughly an hour to an hour and a half, so it works well as an evening trip built around the concert.

A theatre concert like this is a seated, listening-focused evening, and it suits people who enjoy jazz, piano music and Arabic repertoire, as well as anyone curious about how a well-known body of work can sound when it is rethought from the ground up. Familiarity with Ziad Rahbani helps you spot the connections, but it is the reinterpretation that stands at the centre of the night.

Rahbani is a figure of lasting importance in Lebanese music, a composer whose work Suleiman counts among his key inspirations, and this tribute places that legacy in a modern jazz setting.