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Performing "Room" in Dresden | 25 Feb. 2017
After Beirut, Istanbul and Oslo,"Room" was hosted at the infamous Festspielhaus venue in Hellerau, the garden city of Dresden. From theatre/studio building/classroom built by Dalcroze in 1911, to police academy during Nazi times, to hospital and barracks under the Soviets, the Festspielhaus is today an arts and cultural center.
The performance was part of the Mashreq to Maghreb festival curated by Mia Habis and Omar Rajeh, and features Mia Habis (dance), Øyvind Skarbø (drums) and myself on prepared grand piano.
Portrait Of A Great Aunt (10 cm x 12 cm)
My participation to Imago Mundi, the first global contemporary art collection by Benetton Foundation:
Portrait Of A Great Aunt, Constantinople. 1892 is part of the IMAGO MUNDI - MEDITERRANEAN ROUTES exhibition that opened in Palermo in February 2017. The work is printed on linen on a 10 cm x 12 cm canvas, based on a family picture.
The exhibition includes works from the 19 countries bordering the Mediterranean Sea, the Lebanese collection is curated by the Beirut Art Residency.
For more information on Portrait Of A Great Aunt and the Benetton Foundation collection, please click here
From Namur to the BFI
The UK Premiere of Tramontane just took place in London with a full house at the BFI Southbank!
A beautiful screening followed by a moving and deeply engaged Q&A with the director of the film Vatche Boulghourjian and myself on the making of the film and the music, moderated by the brilliant Elhum Shakerifar. Questions revolved around the choice and origin of the songs interpreted in the film, the logistics of film and music production in a country like Lebanon, and the importance of telling this story today.
Tramontane gets awarded with the Prix Découverte in Namur!
Perpetuum Mobile - setting up and opening
Perpetuum Mobile at the Silent Echo exhibition
17 September - 15 October 2016
Excited to be part of this upcoming group exhibition in no less than the historical Roman ruins of Baalbeck! The show is entitled The Silent Echo and is curated by Karina El Helou. It will feature works by Ai Weiwei, Ziad Antar, Marwan Rechmaoui, Susan Hiller, Danica Dakic, Paola Yacoub, Theo Mercier and Laurent Grasso.
I'll be presenting my 12 channel sound installation, Perpetuum Mobile, in a new setting (and music edit) inside the overwhelming Bacchus Temple. The speakers will be perched on 3.5m high black metal poles placed in a large circle. For its Baalbeck edition, the installation is being sponsored by the Baalbeck International Festival. The opening is on Saturday 17th, sound check and mix inside the venue on the 14th.
From Karlovy Vary to Pula
It's festival hopping time, from an amazing film fest in a spa town (Karlovy Vary, Czech Rep) to a fabulous film fest in a beach town (Pula, Croatia) where Tramontane was awarded the international jury's special mention!
Cannes 2016 Snapshots
Standing Ovation for Tramontane World Premiere in Cannes - 2016
Tramontane (Rabih), Vatche Boulghourjian's feature film was greeted at its world premiere with a very long and moving standing ovation at this year's Cannes' Critic's Week! This moment will be etched in our memory forever.
In the video (from left to right): Gaby Khalil, Toufic Barakat, Julia Kassar, Barakat Jabbour, Vatche Boulghourjian, Cynthia Zaven
Opening of Listen At The Beirut Art Center
27 April - 21 August 2016
The exhibition is on! It feels great to be back at the Beirut Art Center, now headed by the amazing Marie Muracciole. The show Listen focuses on the medium of sound. It is curated by both Marie and Marcella Lista, art historian based in Paris and chief curator of the New Media collection at the Centre Pompidou.
My video For Voice And Forest is shot in a natural environment and tackles the experience of sound within the limits of silence and perception through the incredible voice of 8 year old Alexandra.
Tramontane goes to Cannes!
Tramontane has been officially selected to take part in the 55th Edition of La Semaine de la Critique / Critic's Week! The world premiere will take place in May 2016, in Cannes. This is the first time that a Lebanese feature is selected in this section.
I feel blessed to have taken part in this truly unique journey from the start, supervising the music and composing the score, working with an outstanding cast including Barakat Jabbour, a blind musical prodigy and one of the most brilliantly talented performers we'll ever see on screen. And I feel deeply honored to have collaborated with the incredible artist who made it all happen, my partner in life, Vatche Boulghourjian.
Cannes, here we come! 🎊⛱
For more info on the Semaine de la Critique, please click here
For more info on Tramontane please click here
Riding in the spaceship of soundtrack mixing - Tramontane
A Bunker Fairy Tale at the Winterthur International Short Film Festival
My 8 min video A Bunker Fairy Tale produced by the Project Biennial of Contemporary Art (Bosnia) was screened last night at the Winterthur International Short Film Festival! The video was created in 2013 as part of a 12 channel sound and video installation, a work that can still be seen within the permanent exhibition of the Konjiç bunker turned into a contemporary art museum. This would be the first time that the video is screened out of its original context, in the frame of Beirut Video Works. The program was curated by Jasmin Basiç from Visions du Réel festival. The video is based on family archive super 8 films shot in 1975 in Beirut.
For more info on the festival, please click on the official page here
"Room" in Istanbul and Oslo
"Room" is a dance performance with live accompaniment on prepared piano and drums. It's a collaboration between dancer Mia Habis, drummer Øyvind Skarbø and myself on the piano.
Although the structure of the performance is pretty much set, there's always room for improvisation and no two performances are alike. It's always an incredible experience to perform in different venues and on different grand pianos, let alone different countries. We started off with Lebanon in 2014, followed by Istanbul for the first edition of A Corner In The World Festival, then Oslo to perform at the Coda International Dance Festival 2015, where our venue was nothing other but the old Saint Jacob Church turned into an amazing performance space.
For more info on Coda Festival, click here
For more info on A Corner In The World Festival, click here
Talents Beirut
A branch of the Berlinale Talents which invites every year more than 300 talents from the four corners of the globe during the Berlin International Film Festival to meet film experts and discuss film related matters, Talents Beirut is a project that aims to support film talents from the Arab World by discovering new ways to approach the art of film making, whether from technical or theoretical point of views.
I was happy to be part of the "experts" in this 2015 edition of Talents Beirut to conduct the Master Class on film scoring with emerging music composers from Lebanon and Egypt!
For more information on the program, check out the official page here.