Musical Trajectory / Experience :

2009, when Linz was chosen to be the European Cultural Capital, I was asked to create a work for the orchestra. I choose Bach’s MATTHÄUS PASSION but with the transposition of the text and re-orchestration of the music and content coming from the Quran and early Arab instruments. The new title: M PASSION. Jesus was transposed as Muhammad. The concept was very simple, orchestra on stage, a live white horse and illumination of lights directly to the audience members shifting in differing intensity. The music score was prepared, the libretto was ready, the soloists were chosen, and I started to design the visual installation of the piece and the whole theatre space and then suddenly the project was cancelled. The Linz Cultural Authorities became extremely afraid that Muslims would be offended by my work and would protest and thus make death threats. This was my final and last attempt to do anything with classical music, its institution’s and its public.

2006-08. Both Airan Berg and Barry Kovsky wanted me to make a new version of Die Entführung aus dem Serail at 2006-07 SchauspielhausWien, Vienna as part of a 2 year Artist in Residence. I under-took the task under a new title: SARAY// MOZART ALLA TURCA, worked on a new contemporary orchestration only using classical Turkish instruments as well as electronica from pre-recorded birds sounds that I recorded in the sea of Marmara. The piece was transposed as a living installation in the center of Wien (near VolkstheaterWien), as well as an opera installation / cum film. In my version the main characters we also transposed into contemporary young Turks trapped in a right-wing Austria of Georg Haider. The piece sung mainly in Turkish with German for the respected Germanic personae. The opera was treated as an immersive installation with the public on stage. The piece was performed 44 times at the SchauspielhausWien. It was also part of the official WIENER MOZARTJAHR and toured Grand Théâtre de la Ville Luxembourg and Het Toneelhuis Antwerpen/Antwerp.

2004 -2006 directed conceptually co-created, co-wrote, and musically co- conceived an anti-war oratorio, Still Life With Commentator with composer Vijay Iyer and spoken word artist Mike Ladd, commissioned by BAM; Brooklyn Academy of music, New York. The work was initially developed in Chapel Hill with the European Premier in Salzburg and toured afterwards in the United States and became a recording.

Link: http://sepiamutiny.com/blog/2006/12/02/an_oratorio_abo/

2004 – 2008, Nature/Paradis, immersive sound and spatial installation. The project premiered at Japan Foundation Tokyo 2004 and continued New Delhi, Utrecht, Amsterdam, New York & Kyoto.                                                          

2004 created a mono opera Censored Images with Vijay Iyer on the death of Yitzhak Rabin. The work performed at Lincoln Center New York as part of an evening titled : Transmetropolitan with Paul D. Miller aka DJ Spooky, Ryuichi Sakamoto, Beth Colemann, London’s Electric Method among others.                                                          

1999 – 2009 created COMPAGNIE FAIM DE SIECLE in Paris and created musical compositions for the performative installations based on the total immersive principles of gesamtkunstwerk :

·       –  2004 – 2009 Der Perspectiva (prototype)- 6 channel immersive sound installation prototype presented at G8-GAS Gallery / New York

·       –  2004 -2005 Landscapes : SchillerTage : 17 spaces immersive performance and sonic installation «»Mud of words The sky exercises an icy surveillance In the paradise of bacteria» [HM” ]. Creation and preview at the 12th International Schillertage Festival Mannheim, New Casino Paris (adaptation), Electronic Festival Avril.DOT – Confluences, Paris

·       –  2002 Ring (spectacle multimédia) on the physical sonic spaces of breaking and shaking in hip-hop and is interactive immersion with Bronx Hip-hop dancers and Arthur Aviles at the Bronx Museum, New York

·       –  2001 Géométrie variable, sonic installation for Soirée Kenzo at Mains d’œuvres / Saint Ouen and Alfortville festival de l’OH en extérieur à Chinagora quartier

·       –  2001 [k…ma] n. m: (sonic-installation/danse) a study on Coma and its sonic and physical effects as part of «Spooky night” with Paul D. Miller aka DJ Spooky at le lieu Mains d’œuvres / Saint Ouen

·       –  2000 Matériau Médée / Shattered Boxes, created a contemporary opera on the reinterpretation of the tragedy of Medea using the writings of Christa Wolf, Octavia Butler and Christine Angot for Interférences / Belfort, 21ème Biennale du Festival International d’Art Multimédia Urbain; The Kitchen / New York

·       –  1999- 2002 Rivages à l’abandon /Abandoned shores (a 19 minute sonic-multimédia tsunami spectacle multimédia) for Downtown Arts Festival New York; Festival International des Arts de la Rue / Châtillon Festival National de Châtillon; Festival 11 Paris; Festival Piratages, le Batofar Paris; Le Lieu Unique, Nantes; Festival Saison France-Québec, Québec City; MESS Festival / Sarajevo; Festival Reservat Europa – Muffathalle / Munich

July -September 1998 co- created, co-created the opera : Naked Revolution with Samizdat Russian visual artists : Komar and Melamid for the Walker Arts Center in Minneapolis. The project toured The Kitchen New York in New York as well as other places in the United States.

June 1998, I created my own an immersive version of a performance operatic installation in New York based on Heiner Müller’s Medeamaterial, working with the French composer Philip Hersant to re-interpret with vocal score for non classical singers from Pakistan, Mexico, Israel and Morocco with electronic mix and Djing by Paul D. Miller aka DJ Spooky. The project was supported by Goethe Institute New York

March – May 1998, I prepared intensely and created the new version of Tchaikovsky’s Mazeppawith the Kirov Opera at Maryinsky Theatre St. Petersburg at the invitation of Valery Gergiev. The New York MET Opera representatives who came to see my work and insisted that my production was too radical for New York and on the final dress rehearsal three days before the premiere the MET Opera made Gergiev cancel the production.

1997-1998: During the period I worked on Bach Cantatas and at the same time I decided to go the Samara (formally Kuibyshev) Russia and direct my first Professional productions of Alexander von Zemlinsky’s Der Zwerg, Busoni’s Arlecchino & Vladimir Rebikov’s Der Christbaum as a triple bill. The operas were given their Russian premiere and toured within Russia as well as in Germany.

1997 invited by director Peter Sellars and composer Gyorgy Ligeti to work as a musical assistant / assistant director / and choral assistant for the opera Le grand macabre Salzburg Festspiele. For a five-month period prior to the opening in Salzburg I worked as assistant director to Sellars and vocal coach of Ligeti’s score while also stage directing the chorus and at the same time learning much from studying the notations of Maestro Esa- Pekka Salonen musical edits to Ligeti’s opera. Being the only mixed Arab and person of colour, I will never forget being treated like some kind of Brown circus monkey who could surprising read Western music or even have some basic understanding or comprehension of western high culture.

1995 – created performance installation group called “8”. Created happening in New York, at La Mama & KGB Gallery with the visual artist Babi Badelov and dancer Britta Schonbraun

 

Lyrics :

In my free time Ibrahim, have written lyrics for electronic pop / off-the beat singers and musicians. His lyrics are performed by, among others, Imani Uzuri, Fawzia Afzal-Khan, Bülent Kullukcu aka Generation Aldi, Black Sifichi, Walid Breidi, Palina Jonsdottir, Naseem Abbas, Afrika, DJ Wet, Joel Ryan, Ivo Bol, Vijay Iyer (with whom Ibrahim has performed live at The Lincoln Center Festival New York as part of an evening with DJ Spooky aka Paul D. Miler). Ibrahim was also the co-author of the libretto and music for Still Life with Commentator: a war oratorio with Mike Ladd (lyrics) and Vijay Iyer (composition).

Musical Education (brief description) :

Ibrahim studied at Columbia University New York, majoring in philosophy and critical theory. Through his mentor, Professor Edward W. Said, he was encouraged to take up studies at the Juilliard School of Music in New York where Ibrahim took joint courses on musical theory and composition as part of an exchange with Columbia University. Ibrahim was then invited by the Italian -American impresario Frank Corsaro, who initiated a Musical Director’s programs at Juilliard. Chosen to be one of three people in this experimental program to work with young musicians and operatic voices in directing and coaching technique. Ibrahim took a personal interest in the Second Viennese School plus anything Bach, Pierre Boulez, John Cage & George Crumb. For his final directorial and musical presentations, Ibrahim presented 3 works that he had been studying musically and as a director: Viktor Ullmans’ Der Kaiser von Atlantis, written in Theresienstadt with a co-collaboration with Peter Kien; Shostakovich’s Nose, based on Gogol’s parody; Poulenc’s Les Dialogues de Carmelites which was incidentally seen by the writer Susan Sontag who invited Ibrahim to come to Sarajevo during the Siege of Sarajevo. After Columbia/Juilliard in 1996, Ibrahim was invited to work at Manhattan School of Music as an assistant musical coach for vocal students and dissecting scores and working on student techniques as well as being assistant to the director of the opera department. In 1997 Ibrahim made his professional debut in Samara Russia with three premieres. In short Ibrahim has worked with classical composers : Gyorgy Ligeti (in 1997), Philippe Hersant (1998-2001); musical assistant to conductors : Esa- Pekka Salonen (1997), Valery Gergiev (1997-98); directors : Peter Sellars (1997) & Giancarlo Del Monaco (1999). Afterwards Ibrahim has created his own pieces and musical concepts with numerous international artists.

Incidentally, Hannah Busoni, the daughter-in-law of the composer Ferruccio Busoni and in her own right an accomplished lawyer, who fled had fled Germany just before he advent of the 3rd Reich. Hannah, who would have become one of first female Judges in Germany, but because she was German and Jewish this was not possible. Hannah who was a close family friend introduced Ibrahim to the piano scores of Busoni, who gave piano lessons to Hannah when she was a young woman in Berlin during 1920s. When Ibrahim was 15 years old, Hannah gave Ibrahim piano lessons. Ibrahim also learned to play the violin at the age of 11 and the harp at the age of 13.

Being of mixed background and a person of colour made it extremely difficult to work in the realm of professional classical and contemporary because Ibrahim was constantly faced with difficult situation that defined him not through the work, but through the fact that Ibrahim is of mixed Arab background. Thus, it was and it is still assumed that people like Ibrahim cannot truly comprehend western contemporary or classical music or it theories. For this very specific reason and frustrating reason, Ibrahim walked away and stopped having anything to do with institutional music, music making or music performances.