Conversations on Sound and Music, a web-based conversation series hosted by Sharjah Art Foundation, brings into dialogue diverse international voices, including composers, sound artists, music journalists, historians, musicologists, record labels, technologists and community builders.
Taking place online, each conversation will probe the cultural, social and artistic dimensions inherent to sound and music.
Devised for music aficionados, the series will platform the contributions of underrepresented as well as emerging figures in the music industry, and help connect music enthusiasts worldwide through an accessible online format.
Matthew Herbert – 14 August 2024, 8 PM UAE time
Emma Warren – 21 August 2024, 8 PM UAE time
Arash Yazdani – 28 August 2024, 8 PM UAE time
Le Guess Who? and COSMOS – 12 September 2024, 8 PM UAE time
Heba Kadry – 18 September 2024, 8 PM UAE time
Maurice Louca – 26 September 2024, 8 PM UAE time
Matthew Herbert is an award-winning composer, artist, producer and writer who is best known for turning ordinary, so-called ‘found sound’ into electronic music. His innovative work comprises more than 30 albums, such as the much-celebrated Bodily Functions; collaborations with artists like Bjork; scores for Oscar-winning films (A Fantastic Woman); and music for the National Theatre, Broadway, TV series (Noughts and Crosses, The Responder), games (Lego) and radio. He has performed solo, as a DJ, and with various musicians, including his own 21-piece big band and 100-piece choir. Among his other works are installations, plays, operas and commissions from the Royal Opera House, BBC and Deutsche Grammophon. His debut book, The Music, was published by Unbound in 2018. He is currently the creative director of the New BBC Radiophonic Workshop and recently completed a PhD on the ethics of composing with sound.
Emma Warren is a south east Londoner. She is the author of the Dance Your Way Home: A Journey Through The Dancefloor (Faber, 2023), Make Some Space: Tuning Into Total Refreshment Centre and Steam Down: Or How Things Begin (Rough Trade Books, 2019). Her pamphlet Document Your Culture has become popular with DIY archivists across the globe. Hosting a radio show on WWFM for six years, she also has a background in youth work. In 2024 she was awarded International Music Journalist of the Year at the Reeperbahn Festival in Germany.
Estonian-based composer and conductor Arash Yazdani has studied at the Royal College of Music in Stockholm, Hochschule für Musik Basel, University of Huddersfield and the Estonian Academy of Music and Theatre, Tallinn, earning degrees in piano, double bass, orchestral conducting and composition. Yazdani was named a research residency fellow at the Institut für Elektronische Musik und Akustik- IEM, Graz, and has been selected twice by Estonian Public Broadcasting to represent Estonia in the International Rostrum of Composers—in 2019 for his orchestral piece NAKBA and in 2022 for Hurreh, a composition for 12 voices. Yazdani currently serves as artistic director of Sound Plasma, a festival for alternative intonation music in Berlin and Tallinn. He also works as artistic director and conductor of Ensemble for New Music Tallinn in addition to curating music festivals across Europe. In 2023, his double album Propagation of Uncertainty was released by Kairos.
Le Guess Who? is a forward-thinking festival dedicated to boundary-crossing music and culture from all over the world. For four days each autumn, Le Guess Who? takes over pop venues, churches, warehouses and clubs in Utrecht, The Netherlands, with performances by over 150 artists. Audiences enjoy a broad spectrum of musical genres, from indie-rock and hip hop to avant-garde and experimental.
Born from the festival mission to encourage anti-algorithmic musical discovery, COSMOS is a year-round music community that amplifies underrepresented local scenes from around the globe through a programme of films, interviews, performances and artist residencies. Participants build long-lasting relationships, joining an ever-growing network of partners who support, inspire and educate one another.
Le Guess Who? and COSMOS will be represented by writer, filmmaker and translator Julian Brimmers, the editor for COSMOS, and Luis Fernandes, a cultural producer working to build bridges between clients, talent and audiences and blur the lines between online and offline experiences.
Born in Egypt, mastering engineer Heba Kadry grew up listening to early 1990’s indie shoegaze records. After graduating from The American University in Cairo, she got her start in audio with a two-year stint composing jingles at advertising agency J Walter Thompson in Cairo. She then moved to the USA to study audio engineering at The Recording Workshop in Chillicothe, Ohio. Kadry later spent time as a recording engineer and studio manager at Sugar Hill Recording Studios in Houston, Texas, before relocating to New York in 2007 to focus on mastering. She has worked closely with Icelandic visionary Björk and other notable artists such as Beach House, Boygenius, Animal Collective, Sufjan Stevens, Declan McKenna and Future Islands. Kadry also collaborated with the late electronic artist and award-winning composer Ryuichi Sakamoto on many of his releases, including the long-awaited remaster of his albums B2-Unit and BTTB and numerous film scores.
Maurice Louca (b. 1982, Cairo) is an Egyptian composer and performer of experimental music. He recently released his fourth studio album Saet El Hazz [The Luck Hour] with Northern Spy and Sub Rosa Records. Louca has contributed to numerous other recordings as a member of bands, including the Dwarfs of East Agouza, Karkhana and Lekhfa. Over the last decade, he has toured extensively in Europe, North Africa and the Arab world, while also collaborating across different art forms by composing music for dance, visual arts and theatre.
14 August–26 September 2024