Composer, Vocalist, Music Director, and Producer Tariq Al-Sabir has been described as a “boundless talent” by Baltimore’s City Hall and The Examiner deemed him “a rising musical mastermind.” A musician with a command over many styles, his early passion for music was supported by the Peabody Institute of the Johns Hopkins University with a full scholarship for composition lessons that started while he was in middle school and maintained through his high schooling at the Baltimore School for the Arts. In 2006, Tariq’s first job was lending his voice as a lead vocalist to the season 4 theme song for HBO’s “The Wire.”

Al-Sabir, now based in NYC, is a sought after creator and collaborator. He was featured on Al Jazeera for his innovative work that creatively and seamlessly challenges genre separation. In 2016, Tariq was invited to be a performer and speaker at TEDxMidatlantic, focusing on his experiences and projects with music, justice, and music education for Black students Baltimore, Washington, D.C., and New York City.

In 2017, he premiered commissioned works at The Lincoln Center, National Sawdust, and Joe’s Pub at The Public Theater. He collaborated with Kambui Olujimi and the Lone Wolf Recital Corps at MoMA in short film and live performance for the exhibition Projects 107: Lone Wolf Recital Corps. He nationally and internationally premiered the roles of Richard Moss and Travis Douglass in Octavia E. Butler’s Parable of the Sower, an opera by Toshi Reagon and Bernice Johnson Reagon. 

In 2018 Tariq was selected to be a member of the inaugural SUITE/Space Artist residency with the legendary Mabou Mines Theater Company, where he conceived and presented a workshop  version of his theatrical-multimedia song cycle #UNWANTED in their new theater at  Performance Space 122. #UNWANTED premiered to the world at THE SHED in NYC among the inaugural Open Call commissions. Al-Sabir served as music director for the Off-Broadway run of Black Light created by Daniel Alexander Jones at the Public Theater and Greenwich House Theater. In Summer of 2019, Al-Sabir made his LA Philharmonic debut in the cast of Meredith Monk’s ATLAS under the direction of Yuval Sharon. He went on to collaborate with Monk on her new evening-length performance, Indra’s Net. He most recently served as music director for Blood Orange, supporting Harry Styles for all 15 nights of his Love on Tour residency at Madison Square Garden.

He has collaborated with artists such as Toshi Reagon, Meredith Monk, Dev Hynes, Claire Chase, Gladys Knight, Caroline Polachek, Billy Ocean, Meshell Ndegeocello, Toni Blackman, Hilary Hahn, Barry Eastmond, Carl Hancock Rux, Andy Williams, Sandi Patti, Rance Allen, and Maurette Brown Clark.