In Beit Sahour, the Palestinian city beside Bethlehem where cellist Naseem Alatrash grew up, music was part of everyday life long before it was considered a profession.
As a teenager looking to earn an income, he carried his cello wherever opportunities appeared. Some nights meant performing with small Arabic ensembles, other evenings were spent with youth orchestras or adding a sweep of strings to celebratory tunes with wedding bands.
At times the work was more sombre, playing reflective pieces for visitors near Bethlehem’s Church of the Nativity.
Some of the nostalgia from those years runs through Alatrash's debut album, Bright Colours on a Dark Canvas, a four-movement work that, while loosely biographical, reflects his broader musical approach.
The album places the cello, the wooden stringed instrument long associated with the European classical canon, within a sound world shaped by Levantine musical traditions and contemporary jazz.
Alatrash began playing the cello at 12, slightly later than many classical musicians, in a Palestine that, despite its struggles, still had initiatives and platforms to support emerging local talent.
“My family worked in the medical field, but they had a deep love for music. So it was no surprise, really, that all my siblings play instruments – my brother plays the oud and my sister the violin,” he says.
“While I started playing the cello relatively late, things moved quickly because there were places where I could learn and develop my skills, from the Palestinian Youth Orchestra, which I joined by the time I was 13, and then not long after the Edward Said National Conservatory of Music.
“Before I knew it, I was active in Arabic ensembles across the region and that shows you how much culture is valued in Palestine, in that there are opportunities if you are serious about it,” says Alatrash.
While he would later complete his studies through a scholarship at Boston’s prestigious Berklee College of Music, where he now also teaches, Alatrash says it is those early experiences moving between classical training and Arabic repertoire that underpin Bright Colours on a Dark Canvas.
The album began nearly a decade ago as a composition project while he was studying at the Boston conservatory. At the centre of the work was a question about the cello’s place within Arabic musical traditions, where it often takes its melodic cues from the oud, violin or qanun.
“I wanted to write a piece in the setting of what we might consider a concerto for cello, where the cello is the lead instrument in a classical orchestral setting,” he says. “But I wanted the cello to have that Arabic DNA in it, for the melodic aspect and the forms – the framework under which the compositions are written – to be based on classical Arabic composition structures or Palestinian grooves.”
What emerged is a chamber-scale project built around a trio featuring Alatrash on cello alongside US musicians Chase Morrin on piano and percussionist George Lernis. Their fluid interplay moves between written passages and improvisation, while a small string section expands the music’s orchestral scope.
Across its four movements, Alatrash says the album traces a loose emotional arc rooted in memory, conflict and resilience.
“In the first movement, Riwaya, I was imagining life in my hometown, the old markets and the life I grew up with, the smell of the pita bread in the morning and all these beautiful things of nostalgia.”
The tone shifts dramatically with the more percussive and pensive follow-ups: Ramad, which means ashes, and the sombre Lifta, named after a Palestinian village.
“Ramad is the adrenalin of war, and the destruction and movement that comes with it,” he says.
“The third movement turns to historical memory, drawing its title from the Palestinian village depopulated in 1948. I wrote it as a form of elegy for what is lost and the heart-wrenching reality of that.”
The album closes on a more uplifting note with Risala (Message), which Alatrash describes as the essence of humanity, that, as human beings, “you need to hold on to that hope that we will find peace and eventually the human spirit will win”.
Tracing these themes on the cello felt more instinctual than cerebral, Alatrash says, precisely because of those early days improvising in Palestinian wedding halls.
“The way you are trained when you study the cello, the scales you learn and the approach you learn can sometimes put you in a certain box. It becomes hard to improvise and play outside that style,” he says.
“I was lucky because Arabic music, which I grew up playing, has improvisation. It opened my mind to being free and improvising, which made it easier to approach jazz and other music that has improvisation as a core element.”
For Alatrash, the album ultimately returns him to the place where his musical instincts first formed. It also reinforced his belief that every moment matters, and that small opportunities can sometimes lead to bigger paths.
“I used to think that musicians could be detached from reality and live in their own world and write music about things that are imaginary,” he says.
“But then I realised that music is always a reflection of the life you are living and the life you have lived.”
