Cynthia Zaven

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Cynthia Zaven (* 1970 ) is a Lebanese pianist , composer and installation artist who lives in Beirut.

Live and act

Cynthia Zaven (center) in a discussion with Benoit Basirico, Khaled Mouzanar and Emile Aouad (2017)

Zaven, who comes from an Armenian family, first learned the piano from her grandfather. She later received classical European piano lessons. In 1983 she received synthesizers from her parents as a gift so that she could play alternative rock , but also continued to practice the classical repertoire. She played in the Beirut band Fugitive Entity , who covered songs from The Sisters of Mercy before taking her exams. Today interprets classical, experimental and improvised music both in solo performances and together with other musicians. She is a member of the faculty at the Beirut Conservatory.

Since 1993, Zaven has created film scores and sound designs for film, theater, ballet and art projects. The works have been shown at the film festivals in Locarno, Toronto, Edinburgh, Dubai, the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam , the Tribeca Film Festival , the Kassel Documentary Film and Video Festival , Videobrasil, the Bern Art Museum, the Institute of Contemporary Arts and the Oxford Museum of Modern art shown. In 2002 she took part in the sound tower project in Biel with Andres Bosshard . In the meantime she has also started writing for her own videos and sound installations. At the Untuned Piano Concerto with Delhi Traffic Orchestra (premiered in 2006) she played the piano while driving a truck through New Delhi . Her works also include Octophonic Diary (installation, 2009), Morse Code Composition (Soundworks, ICA, 2012) and A Bunker Fairy Tale (installation with video, 2013).

At the Women in Jazz Festival in Halle in 2014 she was the first pianist in Caroline Thon's world jazz octet Eurasians Unity , which musically operates in the spectrum between jazz, the Balkans and the Middle East and was awarded the Ruth in 2015 at the TFF Rudolstadt .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Short entry (Beirut Art Center)
  2. ↑ Thomas Burkhalter Local Music Scenes and Globalization: Transnational Platforms in Beirut Routledge 2013, p. 182ff.
  3. ↑ a b Thomas Burkhalter Local Music Scenes and Globalization: Transnational Platforms in Beirut Routledge 2013, p. 39
  4. ↑ Ruth 2015
personal data
SURNAME Zaven, Cynthia
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Lebanese pianist, composer and installation artist
DATE OF BIRTH 1970