Raed Yassin‘s work as a plastician often originates from an examination of his personal narratives and their workings within a collective history, through the lens of consumer culture and mass production. He has exhibited and performed in numerous museums, festivals and venues across Europe, the Middle East, the United States and Japan, and received several awards and prizes. A seasoned improvising musician, Yassin is a member of “A” Trio alongside Mazen Kerbaj and Sharif Sehnaoui, and founded Annihaya Records in 2009. He is also a founding member of Beirut-based art collective Atfal Ahdath.

Tawiil and Khoury work with sound and movement practices and are community leaders in the field of Arab Experimentalism. Their collaboration began in Detroit in 2006, and they have since toured nationally and internationally with their performance scores. Atlas presents an urgent sonic experience where silence is as meaningful as the nervous but minimalist vocabulary raining down. Atlas is concerned with the negotiations of burden – who holds what. It teases assumed agreements between performer and audience, using immersive physical sonic states to press weight upon the room.

Irena Tomažin & Michael Zerang

Irena Tomažin voice
Michael Zerang drums

Slovenian-born dancer, performer and singer Irena Tomažin works mostly in dance and theater performances, as well as experimental improvised music. She has collaborated with many different choreographers, theater directors and sound artist and musicians, performing in Europe, Japan and the USA. Michael Zerang was born in Chicago, Illinois and is a first generation American of Assyrian decent. He has been an active musician, composer and producer since 1976, focusing extensively on improvised music, free jazz, contemporary composition, puppet theater and experimental theater. Zerang is a long-standing member of The Peter Brötzmann Chicago Tentet, Friction Brothers, and Survival Unit III with Joe McPhee and Fred Lonberg-Holm. Between 1985-1989, he was the artistic director of the Link’s Hall Performance Series, where he produced over 300 concerts of jazz, traditional ethnic folk music, electronic music, and other forms of forward thinking music.

Conca/Doerner/Edwards/Spera

Paed Conca clarinet
Axel Doerner trumpet
John Edwards double bass
Fabrizio Spera drums

A brand new acoustic quartet covering quite an open range of sound issues, from the highly dense instrumental interplay inspired by the Free Jazz tradition, onwards to the abstract sound explorations of contemporary experimental music. The band consists of well-known faces hailing from four different corners of the European Free Music scene. Although Conca (Switzerland), Doerner (Germany), Edwards (UK) and Spera (Italy) have performed together many times over the years in different formations, they are gathered as a quartet for the first time at Irtijal’18.