Thrilled to have been part of the international cultural delegation invited by the British Council for the 25th Anniversary of the signing of the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement in Northern Ireland. The program included meetings, talks and conferences by local and international artists, as well as concerts and screenings exploring the meaning of peace and moving forward in a city still dominated by the looming presence of the Belfast dividing wall.
Yellow Bus is the first feature film in Hindi, Urdu, Arabic and English shot in the Hindu community of Abu Dhabi and written and directed by Wendy Bednarz.
I am happy to have composed the soundtrack of this beautiful film that we just finished mixing with Lama Sawaya at DB Studios Beirut.
Every year, Beirut Cinema Platform (BCP) offers the opportunity for Arab independent filmmakers and producers working on feature-length films to meet with film professionals from around the globe to build partnerships, collaborations, and co-productions.
As a music mentor, I was happy to discuss The Last Man with filmmaker Muhammad Salah and producer Mark Lotfy from Egypt. The Last Man got awarded the CNC cash prize at the BCP 2023 edition.
For more info on the 2023 edition, please click here
10 years after its first performance at Irtijal Festival by Alessandra Rombola (flute) and Esteban Algora Aguilar (accordion), Morse Code Composition will be performed by Maria Mogas Gensana and Audrey G. Perreault at Alte Schmiede, Vienna on December 21st, part of the second volume of A room of one‘s own program by the Between Feathers Ensemble. The program includes music from female composers from Japan, the United States, Poland, Lebanon, Denmark and England.
Program:
Yu Kuwabara. Doll-Blind b‘. (2007/2012). Flute and accordion with projection of Rebecca Akoun‘s animation.
Kristina Wolfe. Dukh. (2013). Soprano, flute, accordion and electronics.
Lisa R Coons. Essay I: Mater (2019). Soprano, alto flute, accordion and electronics.
Agata Zubel. Unisono II (2004). Soprano, accordion, electronics.
Rebecca Saunders. O Yes & I (2018). Soprano and Flute.
Cynthia Zaven. Morse code composition. (2012). Flute and accordion.
Kirstine Lindemann. Further and Back. (2015). Open instrumentation.
Looking forward to being in Norway for Ultima, Oslo’s Contemporary Music Festival!
The Neue Vocalsolisten will perform the Voice Affairs program that includes my piece for 6 voices, Madrigal d’Essilio on September 20th, at the Kulturkirken Jakob.
For more info on the Ultima Festival 2022 program, please click here
The Neue Vocalsolisten rehearsing Madrigal d’Essilio. From L to R: Johanna Vargas, Susanne Leitz-Lorey, Truike van der Poel, Martin Nagy, Guillermo Anzorena and Andreas Fischer
Performance at Irtijal festival on April 3rd at the Ballroom Blitz in Beirut
For more info on the Irtijal festival 2022 program, please click here
My video Kingdom is part of a beautiful selection of works curated by Rayya Badran on Ashkal Alwan's open-access video streaming platform, aashra. Click below to view it, and here to view the selection.
Click here to listen to my latest composition Sediments performed by the Danapris String Quartet. It will be available on the New Music Show of the BBC Radio 3 for 24 days. Sediments begins at 1:37:25
My video For Voice And Forest (2016) will be screened at Modka Beiroet in Zutphen, Holland, part of “The Fabric of Memory” exhibition by Fatima Barznge. Opening on February 5 and 6.
Photo by Thibault De Schepper
Arsenal will be part of a new exhibition entitled How Will It End, opening at the Villa Empain (Brussels) on December 2nd.
The exhibition, designed by the Fondation Boghossian in co-production with the Pompidou Centre, offers an “unprecedented dialogue between its exceptional collections and pieces by Lebanese artists of all generations. Produced in recent years or following the tragic explosions of 4th August 2020, their works are tracing out possible paths to the future, between despair and gentleness, exiles and new anchorages.”
The exhibition, curated by Alicia Knock, curator for the Contemporary Art and Research department of the National Museum of Modern Art of the Centre Pompidou, and Louma Salamé, Director of the Boghossian Foundation, will last until Feb. 6th 2022.
To know more about the exhibition and the participating artists , please click here
To know more about Arsenal, please go to Installations and Experimental Works
Photo by Thibault De Schepper
Photo by Thibault De Schepper
Looking forward to talking about my work as a composer in Tamara Stepanyan’s beautiful documentary Village de Femmes. This event is sponsored by the SACEM, the Society of Authors, Composers and Publishers of Music and will take place at the Centre Pompidou in Paris on December 3rd.
To know more about the screening, please click here
On November 24th, an online seminar at the Hochschule Für Musik Und Tanz in Cologne was organized to the composition students of Prof. Brigitta Muntendorf. The topic, “Artistic Collaboration”, inspired me to review the different types of collaborations in dance, theater, film and contemporary art that I took part of over the years, by showing the students extracts from different projects and films. The seminar was part of NULLNULLEINS, a laboratory for interdisciplinary interaction, in which the artistic experiment and joint reflection with guests from the fields of composition, performance, choreography, direction, philosophy and sociology, among others, are at the center.
For more information on NULLNULLEINS, please click here (in German)
“Nul n’a jamais écrit ou peint, sculpté, modelé, construit, inventé, que pour sortir en fait de l’enfer.” Nobody ever wrote or painted, sculpted, modeled, built, invented, for any reason other than to exit from hell, says Antonin Artaud. Writing music may be the only way to stay “sane” when everything around is falling apart.
Sediments is the title of the string quartet I wrote for Musikprotokoll festival 2021 in Graz, Austria, curated by Susanna Niedermayr and Rainer Elstner. The composition will have its premiere on October 8, 2021 performed by the acclaimed Danapris String Quartet from Ukraine.
For more info about the festival, please click here
