Maya Youssef

Maya Youssef took up the qanun in Damascus at a time when the 78-string instrument was overwhelmingly a men's profession, and became one of its defining contemporary players — hailed as the 'queen of the qanun' by BBC Radio 3 and Songlines.

Based in London for over a decade, she began composing when the war in Syria broke out; the result, Syrian Dreams (2017), was written as an act of survival and mourning. She has since played the BBC Proms and released Finding Home, extending the qanun into contemporary classical and jazz settings.