Naseer Shamma

Naseer Shamma is a renowned Iraqi oud player. He began studying the oud at the age of 12 in Baghdad, and in 1985, at the age of 22 he played his own compositions at his first concert, attended by several renowned Iraqi artists. At the time, he worked closely with the late Iraqi master Munir Bashir but then carried on to developed a very personal style . After receiving his diploma from the Baghdad Academy of Music in 1987, he began to teach oud first at the Institute itself, then in Tunisia and, since 1999 in Cairo, where he holds the post of Director of the Arab House of Oud (in arabic Beit Al-Oud, located inside the historical Beit Al-Harrawi, near the Al-Azhar mosque). In addition to teaching and holding concerts, Shamma composes music for films, plays and television. Naseer Shamma has also created an eight-string oud following the manuscript of the 9th-century music theorist Al-Farabi. This new design (eight instead of six strings) expanded the musical range of the instrument and gave it a distinct tonality. His innovations also include a new method of playing the oud with only one hand, which was originally invented by Salim Abdulkarim, so that children and soldiers injured during the Gulf War could play and enjoy.
For more information, see his website at http://www.naseershamma.com/ 

Articles:
http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2005/758/profile.htm