Live Music

Two or the Dragon / Joss Turnbull at Metro

Monday, Jun 27, 2016
10:00pm -> 11:30pm
Metro Al Madina

Two Or The Dragon was created by musicians Ali Hout and Abed Kobeissy as an expression of their common interest in contemporary urban sounds and traditional Arabic music. This project began to develop when the two musicians’ started questioning Arabic music’s capacity to express urban soundscapes as an organic part of its sonic vocabulary, on the one hand, and to express violence as a local aesthetic without causing a ruptured relationship with its lyrical roots, on the other. This interest was sparked when Hout and Kobeissy began to compose music as a duo for contemporary dance and theater performances, as well as several film productions .Hout and Kobeissy grew up in the Beirut of the 1990’s (universally described at the time as “the biggest construction site in the world”), yet they are unable to recall one single moment or a single sonic memory, from 1990 till the mid 2000’s, that does not contain the dominant and violent sound of heavy machinery destroying what was left of the city. This crude aural landscape eventually cleared the way for the sound of the slow-moving deadline-free reconstruction sites, still a very present component of Beirut’s sonic environment. The duo’s main incentive is to allow this aural memory to find its way into their work as composers and performers. Violent soundscapes have haunted Beirut in times of both war and peace, and this violence deserves its place, as a sonic aesthetic, within contemporary trials for Arabic music; not only for the sake of sonic justice, but also as a motive to dance and to sing. Two Or The Dragon presented its first official performance in Beirut in April 2016, during the Irtijal Festival for Experimental Music, followed by another performance in Theater An Der Ruhr with electro-acoustic musician Joss Turnbull, in Mülheim, Germany.

Hailing from Germany, Joss Turnbull is playing drums since his early childhood. Introduced to Iranian percussion by Mohammed Reza Mortazavi the Iranian goblet drum Tonbak became the center piece of his artistic work. His sound ranges from minimalistic musical explorations of one instrument through fingers, palms, fingernails, sticks, tuning forks, brushes and rubber to more extreme and raw soundscapes, supplemented by his precisely mastered use of live electronics. On stage, his instrument, objects and electronic set up seem to become an extension of his body, acting as one organism and creating an organic synthesis of electric and acoustic sound texture. His first Solo Album “Isturnbull” was presented at “Deutschland Radiokultur” calling him “the most promising and fascinating german percussionist of his generation”. In 2014 he received an award for Solo artists in his hometown Mannheim.

Cost
25,000 LL

Sound engineer: Jawad Chaaban
Stage manager & light operator: Lara Nassar
Stage technician: Nabil Abou el Heijaa

For more information or to make a reservation
76.309.363