solo:
Sharif Sehnaoui, guitar (Beirut)
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duo:
Morishige Yasumune, cello (Tokyo)
Michael Thieke, clarinet (Berlin)
Sharif Sehnaoui
Sharif Sehnaoui is a free improvising guitarist. He plays both electric & acoustic guitars, with (or without) extended and prepared techniques, focusing on expanding the intrinsic possibilities of these instruments without the use of effects or electronics. He now resides in Beirut, his hometown, after more than a decade in Paris, where he started his career as an improviser in 1998, playing at Instants Chavirés where he was a member of several orchestras. He has since performed his music worldwide and played in many clubs & festivals such as Soundfield (Chicago), Moers, Konfrontationen (Nickelsdorf), Météo Music Festival (Mulhouse), CTM & Maerzmusik (Berlin), FEST (Tunis), Skanu Mesz (Riga), 100Live (Cairo) or Musikprotokoll (Graz).
In Lebanon, he actively contributed to the emergence of an unprecedented experimental music scene. Along with Mazen Kerbaj he created “Irtijal” (www.irtijal.org) in 2000, a yearly international festival that is the oldest improvised and new music festival in the Arab world. “Irtijal” celebrated its Xth anniversary in 2010.
He also runs several labels: “Al Maslakh” (www.almaslakh.org) devoted to “publish the un-publishable” on the Lebanese musical scene. “Johnny Kafta’s Kids Menu” (www.johnnykafta.com) an Al Maslakh sub-label dedicated to rock oriented experimentations. And finally, “Annihaya” (www.annihaya.com), focusing on sampling, recycling and the displacement of various aspects of popular culture.
His main groups and projects include the “A” Trio (with Kerbaj & Raed Yassin), and “Wormholes” an audio-visual performance with Kerbaj drawing live on a glass table. He performs solo on the acoustic guitar using unique percussive techniques exclusively, and on the electric guitar mostly performing with dance (Atsushi Takenouchi, Omar Rajeh) and composing for film.
Over the years he has collaborated with several musicians including Michael Zerang, Paed Conca, Thierry Madiot, Fabrizio Spera, Franz Hautzinger, Xavier Charles, Tarek Atoui, Tony Buck, John Butcher, Susie Ibarra, Alan Bishop, Umut Çağlar, Michael Vorfeld or Saadet Turkoz to name but a few.
Morishige Yasumune
“I think that the best condition for improvisation is to play without thinking, just feeling and doing. Similar to meditation.” — Morishige Yasumune
Michael Thieke
clarinet | composer/performer
The Berlin-based clarinetist/composer/performer Michael Thieke is equally at home across a broad range of musical environments, such as experimental song forms, collectively composing projects, improvising collectives, and music on the fringes of jazz. He is exploring the minutiae of sound, timbre and noise, with a particular interest in microtonality and related sound phenomena, and with a preference for long-term collaborations and collective work.
Concert tours took him all around Europe and to China, Canada, Lebanon, Japan and the USA, and his work has been documented on over 40 releases on such labels as staubgold, ftarri, leo records, erstwhile and another timbre. Some of his current Projects are: The International Nothing, The Magic I.D., The Pitch, Splitter Orchester, Hotelgäste and Der Lange Schatten, as well as duos with Biliana Voutchkova and Olivier Toulemonde.