Today's Edition
MAYS IBRAHIM (ABU DHABI)
When Elham Al Marzooqi plays the cello, the music begins long before the audience hears it. The instrument rests against her body, its low vibrations pulsing through her chest, arms and breath.
This connection, built through years of training and discipline, has shaped her journey from private practice rooms to international stages, earning her recognition as the UAE’s first professional female cellist.
The cello has been Al Marzooqi’s companion for more than two decades, but her musical journey began much earlier – at age five, behind a piano in her mother’s music institute in Abu Dhabi.
That early training wired her ear, discipline, and understanding of harmony long before she ever held a bow.
“When the cello came later, it felt like a natural continuation,” she told Aletihad in a recent interview.
But her earliest memory of the instrument isn’t romantic, it involved frustration – “in the best sense.”
Her hands couldn’t yet produce the sound her ear imagined, and the gap between the two frustrated her enough to keep working at it.
That stubbornness grew into commitment, and eventually into a deep, defining love for the instrument.
Her training included private lessons, international masterclasses, and instruction from renowned professors in both the UAE and the UK.
One of her most significant breakthroughs came when she won an audition to join the Firdaus Orchestra – first launched for Expo 2020 Dubai and now based in Expo City Dubai.
“It was like being thrown into the deep end of the musical world,” she recalls.
Suddenly, Al Marzooqi was immersed in symphonic repertoire, film score recordings, world premieres, and collaborations with global icons including AR Rahman, Beyoncé, Stewart Copeland and Anoushka Shankar.
Through it all, one realisation stood out for Al Marzooqi: music wasn’t a hobby she enjoyed, but a force she couldn’t ignore.
“No matter what was happening – work, study, stress – I always found myself returning to the cello,” she said. “That’s when I understood that the cello wasn’t something I did. It was who I was.”
Her practice philosophy: efficiency over hours, reflects a life lived between roles – musician, lawyer, mother.
“I quickly learned that three unfocused hours don’t compare to 40 minutes of intentional work,” she said.
One non-traditional practice method this cellist swears by involves being away from the cello.
She studies scores, visualises bow paths, and analyses phrasing – practices which, she believes, make her time with the instrument more meaningful and allow for more breakthroughs.
Finding her Voice as an Artist
Two cellists can play the same composition and sound entirely different. The notes are the same, but the emotion, pacing and character a musician chooses is what makes their performance distinctive.
Al Marzooqi noted that interpretation starts with the score. “I study what the composer wrote... then I ask myself what I want to communicate within that framework. It’s a dialogue between the composer’s voice and my own instincts.”
The key is striking a balance between discipline and personality to avoid an interpretation that is sterile or one that is self-indulgent.
She pointed to Yo-Yo Ma and Mstislav Rostropovich’s radically different interpretations of Bach’s Cello Suites - one mediative, one fiery.
The cello’s emotional range, she believes, is unmatched. “Its range mirrors the human voice, which is why people with no classical background still react so strongly to it. It can whisper, cry, sing and speak with warmth without exaggeration. A single cello line can say more than an entire orchestra.”
Milestone Moment at Carnegie Hall
As an Emirati woman performing on international classical stages, Al Marzooqi feels the weight of representation.
“Emirati women in classical music are still rare,” she noted. “My presence on stage matters as much as my playing.”
Last month, she made her debut at Carnegie Hall in New York, earning two standing ovations for her performance, “A Journey to the New World”, with the Reina Sofía School of Music under Andrés Orozco-Estrada.
“During Dvořák and Barber, there was a kind of intensity on stage that’s hard to explain. Whether it was the venue, the music, the musicians, or all of it combined, the atmosphere was charged.”
Walking through the hall’s corridors afterwards past portraits of the artists she grew up admiring felt like stepping into history.
She credits the Abu Dhabi Music & Arts Foundation (ADMAF) and the Abu Dhabi Festival for championing her career. “Their support isn’t symbolic or ceremonial – they mentor, guide, challenge, and open doors that simply wouldn’t open otherwise. Without their patronage, I wouldn’t have stood on that stage.”
Every Note Counts
Large concert halls demand trust in technique, in preparation, and in instinct. What the cellist hears on stage is never what the back row hears, but Al Marzooqi has learned to play for the hall, not for herself.
“I focus on projection, clarity and intention. If the phrasing is honest and the bow is doing its job, the sound will reach the room.”
She allows her interpretation to respond naturally to the acoustics, the atmosphere, the conductor, the orchestra.
“I don’t change things randomly, but if the moment calls for a different colour or a broader phrase, I allow that. It keeps the music alive.”
More than anything, Al Marzooqi wants her audiences to leave with a feeling they can’t quite shake off.
“If someone leaves thinking, ‘Something in that moved me’, then I’ve done my job,” she said.
