Duration
7.6.25, 6:00 PM - 7:00 PM
Location
Auditorium
Language
English
Admission
Free
Info
Youmna Saba (Beirut, 1984) is a musician, composer, and musicologist. Through her work, she explores the connection between language and sound, and specifically the physicality, rhythm and nuances of the Arabic language. Her current research focuses on instrument and space resonances in different sonic and musical contexts. For Youmna, meaning emerges after the sound, which is a key aspect of her groundbreaking approach.
When Youmna performs and records, she transforms the oud (a traditional Arabic string instrument) by combining it with modern electronics, to create unique sounds. With this approach she amplifies subtle, often overlooked sounds generated during playing.
On the first evening of her residency, Youmna will perform her album Wishah (meaning veil in Arabic), which is a composition for voice, oud and electronics in five stages. She wrote the album after leaving Beirut for Paris. For the listener it feels like she is telling a story, and at each stage, something new is revealed. As the tracks unfold, they strip away layers of constructed emotions and perceptions, woven over time, to expose a space that no longer exists. Wishah is a farewell to home.
On the second evening of her residency, she will give a live improvised performance called The Reconstruction of the Unspoken, which is inspired by a sound installation she made for the Quai Brandy museum in Paris called La Réserve des Non-Dits (meaning the storage of the unspoken in French). For this project, Youmna was invited to the museum to visit a six-story tower where 9000 instruments from all over the world are stored. Over the course of 6 months, she proceeded to capture the sounds of these instruments as she discovered they were still resonating as they lay in storage.
“This project was my way to engage with the possibilities of sound as a portal to unaccessible narratives […].” – Youmna Saba
On Saturday an artist talk will take place at 6pm. The admission is free, no registration needed.
