In Summer 2017, in collaboration with Francesco Iannuzzelli, I put together a concert to compliment an exhibition of photography by Steve McCurry. The exhibition’s primary selling point was the famous photograph of Afghan refugee Sharbat Gula. Rather than directly entering the debate about media exploitation of the dispossessed, we decided Read more…
I had the privelage to study composition with Ross Daly, under whose guidance I learned how to write in a modal idiom, and in a range of genres typical of the Ottoman era and broad west Asian region. One of these genres is the saz semai, which has a metre Read more…
In December 2015, in collaboration with Stavroula Constanti, I organized three concerts as fund-raisers for ProActiva Open Arms, a Spanish NGO working to save lives in the Mediterranean. We were also happy to be selling the celebrated cookbook Soup for Syria in support of the same cause. The beautiful image of a Read more…
To complement the story of Ted Gorton’s book Renaissance Emir, I put together a programme to the Mosaic Rooms, London. I was joined by Stavroula Constanti, Ahmad AlSalhi, Nilufar Habibian and Interlink publisher Michel Moushabeck. Literature Event & Concert: Renaissance Emir
Un cycle de chansons entre la Tamise et le Bosphore Sons lointains tissés par des mémoires de femmes Poesie de Christina Rossetti Musique de Rachel Beckles Willson Musiciens: Rachel Beckles Willson (voix, oud), Ciro Montanari (tabla), Kostas Tsarouchis (contrabbasse), Evgenios Voulgaris (yayli tanbur) Sing no Sad Songs for Me réunit les traditions Read more…
The London launch of the long-awaited English translation of Wasif Jawhariyyeh’s memoirs was held at London’s Mosaic Rooms in February 2014. Jawhariyyeh’s account of Palestine in the late Ottoman and British Mandate eras is an indispensible document for historians, and also provides fantastic insights into music-making of the period. It Read more…
In 2004 the English press—specifically newspapers that are usually rather critical, The Guardian and The Observer—covered some western classical music initiatives in Ramallah led by the celebrated conductor Daniel Barenboim. They were wildly admiring, while also reproducing imperialistic discourses about Arabs and Europe (the former in need of the latter’s civilizing missions). I Read more…
Ligeti was at the heart of progressive movements in classical composition in Europe from the 1960s onwards, but in this book I examined his work through the frame of his earlier Hungarian influences. I dug out numerous sources from communist-era archives, demonstrating the machinery of artistic censorship and Ligeti’s enmeshed Read more…
In 2001 I was artistic Director of Signs Games and Messages, a 2-week long festival celebrating the music of Gyorgy Kurtag, and a collaboration between London’s South Bank Centre and the Royal Academy of Music. We were awarded the Royal Philharmonic Society Festival Prize for 2002. Press coverage was extensive, Read more…
My first book was commissioned for Ashgates ‘Landmarks in Music Since 1950’ series. It focuses on a piece of music composed in 1960s Hungary, still today uncompromisingly tough to listen to, even while it was rejected as ‘too 19th-century’ when it was premiered, in 1968, at the hothouse of progressive Read more…