Jonas Kocher, Gaudenz Badrutt Meet Mazen Kerbaj and Raed Yassin at IRTIJAL ’15

Founded in 2000, Irtijal is presently the oldest music festival of the city of Beirut, and one of the longest standing international festivals of post-war Lebanon. Irtijal is organized by MILL, a non-profit association founded in 2000 by musicians Mazen Kerbaj and Sharif Sehnaoui, with the intent of promoting contemporary and experimental practices in music, and assisting projects that do not fit within the Lebanese mainstream, yet still present undeniable artistic value.

The work of Swiss accordion player and composer Jonas Kocher explores the relationships between tone, noise and silence, and the process of listening. As a composer, he has realized projects situated between composed theater, installation and concert pieces. Kocher has often collaborated in improvised and conceptual contexts with musicians such as Michel Doneda, Christian Wolfarth, Alfredo Costa Monteiro, Luca Venitucci, Jacques Demierre, and Christian Kesten, to name but a few.

Gaudenz Badrutt began his career as a pianist in the field of contemporary classic music. For the past 15 years, he has worked as an electronics musician in the field of improvised and experimental music. He is known mainly as one half of electro-acoustic duo “strøm” (with Christian Müller), as well as for his duos with Hans Koch and Jonas Kocher. His music relies on a very instrumental use of computer/live sampling and electronic devices.Badrutt has also collaborated with Burkhard Beins, Michael Vorfeld, Norbert Möslang, Dieb13, and Diatribes, among others. He presently lives in Biel, Switzerland.

Founded in 2009, the Kocher-Badrutt duo explores the relations between the accordion’s electronic sounds and the instrumental potential of electronic equipment. They create a fragmented and tense sound universe, always open to the present moment and random accidents.

Born in 1975, Lebanese artist Mazen Kerbaj is one of the pillars of Lebanon’s free improvisation scene, both as a trumpet player and as a founding member of the Irtijal Festival. In 2005, together with fellow musician Sharif Sehnaoui, he launched Al Maslakh, a record label specialized in producing and releasing experimental and free improvised music. Kerbaj’s regular touring partners include Sharif Sehnaoui, Raed Yassin, Franz Hautzinger, Stéphane Rives, Michael Zerang, Axel Dörner, Mike Bullock, and Vic Rawlings, among others. In 2013, he contributed to the creation of the Karkhana project, featuring the talents of Egyptian musician Maurice Louca, Turkish musicians Umut Çağlar and Özün Usta, Canadian musician Sam Shalabi, and Sharif Sehnaoui.

Born in Beirut in 1979, Raed Yassin graduated from the theatre department at the Institute of Fine Arts in Beirut in 2003. An artist and musician, Yassin is one of the organizers of Irtijal Festival, and founded the prominent Annihaya record company in 2009. He has released several albums on a variety of labels, including Al-Maslakh and Annihaya. As a plastician, Yassin’s work often originates from an examination of his personal narratives and their workings within a collective history, through the lens of consumer culture and mass production. He has exhibited and performed in numerous museums, festivals and venues across Europe, the Middle East, the United States and Japan, and received several awards and prizes, notably the Abraaj Capital Art Prize in 2012.

Cost
25,000 LL

For more information
76.952.387