Bassam Saba

Bassam Saba (26 October 19584 December 2020) was a Lebanese musician and a promoter of Arabic music in the west.

He was a co-founder of the New York Arabic Orchestra and the director of Lebanon's national conservatory of music.

He died of complications from COVID-19 in Beirut, Lebanon, on December 4, 2020.

Early life and education Saba was born on 26 October 1958, in Tripoli, Lebanon. His father, Antoine Saba, worked for an oil company. His mother, Delena Saba, was a homemaker. His family was musical, and his older siblings taught him to play the nay. At the outset of the Lebanese Civil War in 1976 he went to Paris to study music at the Conservatoire Municipal des Gobelins in Paris, where he earned his BA in Western Classical Music and Flute Performance, and the Gnessin School in Moscow, where he received a master's degree in Western Flute Performance and Music Education.

In 2007, he co-founded the New York Arabic Orchestra. for which, due to bureaucratic error, he was never paid.

Awards He was named one of the 10 Most Outstanding Artists by the Arab American National Museum in 2007.

Personal life Saba was married to Dr. Diala Jaber and had a daughter, Mariana.

Final performance and death On 17 October 2020, Saba played the flute in a chamber piece by Telemann in the town of Bsharri in a church there as part of his work to raise money for the conservancy that had been damaged in the huge port explosion on 4 August 2020, which left 200 people dead and caused considerable damage. Three days later. he was infected with COVID-19 amid the COVID-19 pandemic in Lebanon at a board meeting at the conservatory. He was hospitalized and later transferred to the non-Covid ICU at the American University of Beirut Medical Center when he was considered no longer contagious. A few days later, he developed septic shock after contracting a "superbug". He was intubated, but later died from complications of COVID-19, on 4 December 2020, at the age of 62.