03.04.2010

Dear All, This production between Swiss film production Dschoint Ventschr, film director Sabine Gisiger and ENJA RECORDS was just awarded the highly respected first prize at the Montréal International Film Festival. It will now be presented subsequently on an international tour, with stops at such prestigious institutions as the Louvre in Paris, the Studio national des arts contemporains Le Fresnoy in Tourcoing, the AIA/Center for Architecture, the Mid-Manhattan Library and the Morgan Library in New York, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, the Musée national des beaux-arts in Quebec City, the National Gallery of Canada and the Tate Modern in London. We are happy and proud. Sabine Gisiger / Matthias Winckelmann Some years ago Mahmoud Turkmani, the Lebanese-born avantgarde composer and virtuoso player living in Switzerland, attended the annual congress of classical Arab music in Cairo, Egypt When he advocated changes in conventional Arab music forms, he was called "Ya Sharr Mout". Turkmani was hurt by his colleagues' hostility, and words began to rotate inside his head. "Ya Sharr Mout" (son of a bitch) turned into "Ya Sharr, Mout!" (oh evil, die!). He became fascinated with the idea of experimenting with words, even writing them backwards, especially words referring to taboos in the Arabic world. Soon he joined Swiss video artist Michael Spahr who put the play with Arabic words into calligraphic images of a touching beauty. Then the idea for an ensemble work emerged: "I began to compose in a similarly playful system", Turkmani says. "I recycled some of my older compositions by playing melodies backwards or exchanging the order of notes." Teaming up with classical Arab players from Egypt and Lebanon, using the critical poems by Nadia Tuéni (1935-1983) and adding Spahr's video art for live presentation, Turkmani turned "Ya Sharr Mout" into a multimedia performance that struggles against any form of ideological or religious narrow-mindedness. During one year Swiss film director Sabine Gisiger and her team accompanied Mahmoud Turkmani observing the development of this audio-visual project. Gisiger's film not only tells the story of the music -- composing, rehearsing, performing -- but also the story of Mahmoud Turkmani's life. He has grown up in two divergent cultures, the oriental and the occidental. His deepened knowledge in both musical systems made it possible for him to check touchpoints between them without using superficial fusion techniques. He kept asking himself: Can the Maqamat world of sound with its richness of modi be combined with the western tone system? How can complex Arab rhythms constitute a work of new music without getting stuck in shallow "Arabisms"? Says director Gisiger: "The film invites the audience to listen and look carefully. This seems very important to me at a time in which hatred and lack of understanding reign between the Orient and the Occident." -- "Ya Sharr Mout" (the music, the audio-visual performance, the film) is a journey in search for more understanding between East and West. Mahmoud Turkmani composer, oud, guitar Nisreen Hmaidan vocal Saber Abdel Sattar qanun Khaled Oweida violin Amr Moustafa percussion Ahmad Osman bass Compact Disc (55 min.) + Film DVD (70 min. ) ENJ-9530 2 rec. Oct 2007, Beirut

01.09.2008

NEW RELEASE - Ya Sharr Mout (DVD & CD)

DVD Sabina Gisiger Director/Writer Movie 70 min.(Film by Sabina Gisiger) Extra 59 min. (Ya Sharr Mout -Live in Beirut - 2007)

29.10.2007

New project "Ya Sharr Mout" opened in Beirut in October 2007

Text: Nadia Tuéni / Visuals: Michael Spahr

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XVID-AVI movie(48 MB)

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09.11.2005

Musicsheets from Mahmoud Turkmani

Buy Mahmoud Turkmani's musicsheets online by enjamusic