Paed Conca - Al Maslakh Festival English

Paed Conca Päd Conca Patrik Conca Otolithen Cleee Blast Best Before Composer Improviser Komponist Bassist Cello Clarinet Baß Tsuki hans koch al maslakh michael zerang jack wright charles hayward capitol k rubai3i irtijal fabian kuratli markus eichenberger margrit rieben

GERMAN: FRENCH: CONTACT:

Paed Conca Päd Conca Patrik Conca Otolithen Cleee Blast Best Before Composer Improviser Komponist Bassist Cello
, Irtijal, REITSCHULE BERN, , KulturStadtBern, Swisslos Amt für Kultur des Kantons Bern present:

FROM NOVEMBER 23th TO NOVEMBER 26th 2006 THE REITSCHULE IN BERN WILL HOLD THE AL MASLAKH FESTIVAL:

On the shattered remains after the civil war in Lebanon, a group of young artists and musicians in Beirut founded the Al Maslakh-label, the name meaning «slaughterhouse», a hint at the dark humour acquired by those people who have grown up in times of a devastating war. Taking the initiative, amongst others, were Mazen Kerbaj, Christine Sehnaoui, Raed Yassin and Sharif Sehnaoui, to create a stage for artistical and musical experiments – something not only hard to imagine happening in these regions before, but even being proof of a certain amount of courage. Amongst other happenings they started organising an annual festival from 2000 onwards, bringing together the local scene with big names among the free, improvising and experimental musicians from all over the world. While the initial edition of Irtijal (Irtijal-Blog), the first festival for free and improvised music, experimental avant-garde, contemporary composition, noise, and alternative rock in Beirut, presented a purely local line-up, in the following years people like
Peter Brötzmann, Gene Coleman, Mike Cooper, Le Quan Ninh, Michael Zerang, Johannes Bauer,
Fred Van Hove graced the guestbook, musicians and projects from Japan, China, France, Italy,
Switzerland, Greece, the Netherlands, Austria, Norway, Sweden, India, England, the United States, Germany and Tunisia made their entries. Therefore, in the back-catalogue of Al Maslakh, the only independent music-imprint of the Arab world, publishing exclusively music produced in Lebanon, recorded at the festivals or in local studios, contains works featuring some of those international artists. The future of both label and festival now is deeply uncertain.

Always true to the basic idea to provide a space for what's rarely seen or heard, to promote culture that asks for preoccupation, for an engaged, not just a passively consuming public, the Reitschule offers itself as a place to host the small festival Al Maslakh , named after the label, to be a platform for some of the initaiators of this once blossoming lebanese scene, for them to relate their ways to handle a reality swayed by conflicts in the exchange with musicians rooted in our hemisphere. As an evidence of the influence of a hostile reality may serve the action of graphic artist and trumpet-player Mazen Kerbaj, whose Blog since the beginning of the war has become a reference-point for first-hand information about the situation in Lebanon for people from all over the globe, when he spontaneously picked up his trumpet during an airforce raid on Beirut to make the detonations of israelian bombs the somber accompaniment for his open-air concert. Among the guests of this years Irtijal-Festival held in spring, next to free-jazz-saxophonist Jack Wright from the States, German trumpet-player Axel Dörner and others, was the internationalist project Blast. The groups bass-player and clarinetist
Paed Conca , hailing from Berne, followed their stay in Beirut with the invitation of Mazen Kerbaj, and guitarist Sharif Sehnaoui, organising a small European tour for them along with famous Swiss reeds-player Hans Koch and himself. Shortly after ther impressive concert in the beautiful yard of the Reitschule in the beginning of July the two lebanese musicians had to depart towards home literally when the war began.

The resulting relation to the fate of those people wasn't the least factor leading to the idea to organize Al Maslakh-festival in Berne. With the exhibition of visual work by Laure Ghorayeb, Mazen Kerbaj and Raed Yassin, a projection of the film «Resistance» as a part of a series of films dealing with issues of the Far and Middle East shown in the Reitschule-Cinema throughout the month, concerts featuring Mazen Kerbaj, Raed Yassin, Christine und Sharif Sehnaoui, who will encounter Hans Koch, Markus Eichenberger, Margrit Rieben, Michael Zerang, Fabian Kuratli, Christian Weber, Charles Hayward, Capitol K and Paed Conca, the opportunity will be offered to ascertain once more that a global understanding under the sign of peace is possible.