The giant shadow of Umm Kulthoum is inevitably cast over anyone who performs her songs. This time the singer will cast her shadow over "Queen of the Nile," a concert scheduled Nov. 4 as part of the International Oud Festival at the Confederation House in Jerusalem. Sami Khsheibun, who created the show and accompanied it on the violin with the orchestra he established, is not afraid of Umm Kulthoum’s shadow, but of other shadows: commercial ones, that are damaging the music of the Arab world and the world at large.

Khsheibun was born in 1970 in Kfar Kana. When he was a boy he would visit the Catholic Church in the village to hear the Italian nuns who played the electric organ. At the Orthodox church where his father was a "muratel" (a cantor), he heard Byzantine music and later became a member of the choir.

At 15, he started studying the violin with Eliyahu Kagan in Haifa. Later he learned Western harmony and conducting with a teacher who was a new immigrant from Romania. "All that time I also played Arabic music," he told Al-Monitor. "I had a violin tuned to Western music and a violin tuned to Eastern music. I started to apply the Western violin techniques to Arabic music without damaging its authenticity."

In 1993, he established the Alfarabi orchestra, which accompanied the tribute to Umm Kulthoum. In 1996, he started studying at the Jerusalem Academy of Music, where he teaches today, and was a student in the first class of the Oriental Music Division.