Mahmoud Turkmani and Joelle Khoury: meet the composer

Meet the composer – an initiative of Joelle khoury, is a project that aims at acquainting the Lebanese public with contemporary composers, mainly Lebanese, living in Lebanon and abroad. As part of the project, various composers are invited to discuss their experience and share their music through listening/discussion sessions that are sometimes followed by miniature concerts. The present “meeting” will focus on the music of Mahmoud turkmani, Lebanese/Swiss composer based in Bern, and Beirut composer Joelle khoury. A talk by the 2 composers will be followed by a short concert during which pieces written by both artists will be performed for the first time.

Concert with:
Mahmoud Turkmani: guitar and oud
Nabil Moue: flute
Mustafa Said: oud
Joelle Khoury: electronics

Joelle Khoury
Lebanese pianist/composer. Economics and musicology studies VA, USA. Masters in philosophy usj Beirut. Piano diploma Lebanese national conservatory. 4 CDs: tumbling up and is it so (jazz), music and poetry (voice and chamber orchestra), dream she is (monodrama in Arabic for voice and chamber orchestra, singer Fadia Tomg El Hage, poetry by Jacques Aswad). Various works involving live music, prerecorded electronics, film, dance and poetry.

Mahmoud Turkmani
the innovative guitarist, composer, and oud player Mahmoud Turkmani is considered as a renovator and bridge-builder between contemporary western-classical and Arabic-traditional music. Mahmoud Turkmani who was born in 1964 in northern Lebanon studied from 1984 to 1989 classical guitar and composition at the Moscow academy for music. After his graduation, he continued his studies at Oscar Ghiglia (1989/90, conservatory of Basle, Switzerland), Juan Carmona (1991/92, flamenco programme, Andalucia), and Stephan Schmidt (1994-97, conservatory of Berne, Switzerland). Stephan Schmidt encouraged him to develop his own musical language. It took Mahmoud Turkmani several years to devise his own musical world which, based on his own multicultural background, found its unique form and expressiveness. At present, Mahmoud Turkmani teaches classical guitar and oud at the conservatory of Berne. He is the founder of the guitar quartet “Ludus” which has issued a compact disc (“nuqta”) with Enja records, Munich/Germany in December 1999. Further discs were released by Enja records in 2002 /“fayka”, 2004 /“zakira” and 2008 /“ya sharr mout”. Mahmoud Turkmani performs as a soloist (solo, duo, trio etc.) in various European cities and in Arab countries. Since 1994 Mahmoud Turkmani has composed works for well-known artists and ensembles such as Keyvan Chemirani, Barry Guy, Patricia Kopatchinskaya, Conrad Steinmann, Matthias Ziegler, the trio aspekte, the Erato string quartet, the Eos guitar quartet, the Berne symphony orchestra, and the Cairo symphony orchestra. In the multimedia project “ya sharr mout” Mahmoud Turkmani experiments with video, word, and sound. Currently, he is working on a composition about the book “Lilith’s return” by the Lebanese writer Joumana Haddad.

Mustafa Said
1983, oud player, chanter, composer, and music researcher, specialized in traditional Arab and oriental style. Founder of asil ensemble for interpretative traditional Arab oriental contemporary music in 2003. Teaching oud, chanting, art of improvisation, Arab ensemble music (takht) at the high music institute, Antonine University, Lebanon since 2006.  Teacher at the Arab oud house (bait el-oud al-arabi) in Cairo in 2004. He has two albums as well as sharing in several recordings, put music to several works for theater as well as documentary films, participated in several conferences, music workshops, festivals, and venues both locally and internationally as a lecturer, teacher, soloist, and also with ensembles.

Nabil Moue
Nabil moue began his musical studies in Lebanon with his uncle Nizar Moue and André Abu-Sawan as flute instructor. In 1986 went on a scholarship to Kiev, Ukraine to pursue an academic study of music. He studied flute; first at Kiev musical college glier and after at the Tchaikovsky higher conservatory of music in Kiev, under Oleg Kudriashov, where he got his master’s degree as a flute player in 1994. Moue attended many workshops supervised by Wissam Boustany and Jean-Pierre Rampal held in Lebanon. He has performed many recitals in Lebanon and abroad that have included various musical works and recorded his first cd “sounds from the other river-side” in spring 2008. He is currently a flute professor at the Lebanese national higher conservatory of music and a member of the Lebanese national symphony orchestra.