My name is Noémie Chemali, a Lebanese-French-American violist, advocate, and writer currently based in New York City, and a 2022 alumna of the Juilliard School. My journey in the city began in August 2020, a time marked by the tragic news of a massive explosion in the seaport of Beirut, Lebanon—my grandmother's home.
Initially overwhelmed with a sense of helplessness from thousands of miles away, I pondered how I could contribute to the recovery efforts for my grandmother and the 300,000 others who had lost their homes. In response, I initiated a global collaboration, contacting Lebanese composers worldwide to join me in crafting an album of Lebanese music that pays homage to the resilience of the people of Beirut. The inspiration came from Lebanon's telephone code, +961, leading to the birth of Opus 961.
Turning to my fellow musicians at Juilliard, I was fortunate to assemble a stellar team of 10 top-notch performers who passionately embraced the project. Today, many of them grace the world's most prestigious stages.
After three years of dedicated effort, the fruits of our labor are ready to be shared! The album is set to be released on all platforms in February under the Dreyer-Gaido label. I extend a warm invitation to all of you to join the album launch concert in New York City on January 13. This immersive experience invites you to actively participate in the evening's performance, culminating in a post-concert reception where I eagerly anticipate meeting you!
I am deeply appreciative of the funds provided by the Barenboim-Said Foundation (USA) and the Creative Engagement, a regrant program backed by the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs (DCLA) in collaboration with the City Council. Additional support from the New York State Council on the Arts, the office of the Governor, the New York State Legislature, and the Howard Gilman Foundation, administered by LMCC, has been instrumental in making this project a reality.
Viola
French-Lebanese-American violist Noémie Chemali is a NYC based violist and writer. She received her Bachelor’s degree from McGill University’s Schulich School of Music, her Artist Diploma from the Robert McDuffie Center for Strings at Mercer University, and her Master’s Degree from The Juilliard School.
During her time at Juilliard, she made her Carnegie Weill Hall solo debut in the UN Chamber Music Society’s Arabic Language Day concert and collaborated with dancers of the New York City Ballet. During her time at the McDuffie Center for Strings, she performed alongside faculty members of the Cavani and Ehnes String Quartets. In 2019, she also performed in “A Night of Georgia Music,” a tour of the American South with violinist Robert McDuffie, guitarist Mike Mills of the band R.E.M., and pianist Chuck Leavell of the Allman Brothers Band/Rolling Stones. Some performance highlights from McGill include playing a concert with clarinetist David Krakauer in a program of Klezmer music, being selected to perform a chamber work by John Rea in a concert presented by the Société de musique contemporaine du Québec (SMCQ) alongside Schulich faculty and students, and participating in the 2018 Musical Chairs Chamber Music Festival, where she collaborated with students from the Mozarteum (Austria) and the Yong Siew Toh Conservatory of Music (Singapore).
Cello
Raffi Boden is an innovative cellist and educator and a recent graduate of The Juilliard School. He has experience teaching cello, violin, music theory and improvisation. Raffi was the winner of the 2018 Oberlin Concerto Competition and performed as a soloist with both the Orchestra and the Contemporary Music Ensemble. With his band Mamaliga, he has performed internationally and been a guest artist at Yiddish New York, Yiddish Summer Weimar and KlezKanada. In 2016, he spent a month teaching and studying the El Sistema method in Venezuela, and he has performed internationally in France, Venezuela, and around the U.S. Raffi holds a B.M. in Cello Performance and a B.A. in French Language from the Oberlin College & Conservatory.
Double Bass
With outstanding virtuosity and the rare ability to communicate their ideas effortlessly to audiences, Kebra is poised to be a leader of their generation.
In line with their upbringing, Kebra-Seyoun is able to give prominence to the dance qualities in all forms of music. Exhibiting their versatility, Kebra-Seyoun has performed alongside esteemed improvisers and composers such as Jon Batiste, at Carnegie Hall, and Tyshawn Sorey, at the New England Conservatory. Kebra-Seyoun was also featured in “Slugs’ Saloon” at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston, an interactive installation created by famed jazz musician and composer Jason Moran.
Currently, in addition to their solo career, Kebra-Seyoun Charles is a passionate chamber musician. Playing with groups like East Coast Chamber Orchestra, A Far Cry, Palaver Strings, and the Sphinx Virtuosi afford Kebra the opportunity to showcase their musicianship while still playing within an ensemble. A prime example of this is their tenure on the 2019 Emmy award-winning Broadway production “Hadestown”.
Flute
Lauren Scanio is a recent graduate of The Juilliard School as a student of Robert Langevin. She received her Bachelor's degree from the Manhattan School of Music where she studied with Michael Parloff. Lauren’s orchestral experience has included performances with The Juilliard Orchestra, Manhattan School of Music Symphony, Montclair Orchestra, and New York Youth Symphony. She has also substituted with the New York Philharmonic, the New World Symphony in Miami, FL, and the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra, and been a fellow with the National Repertory Orchestra in Breckenridge, CO.
An avid recitalist, Lauren’s concerts have explored an adventurously eclectic range of repertoire from baroque to contemporary at such venues as MSM’s Greenfield Hall, the Twentieth Century Club in Buffalo, NY, and the Hochstein School of Music and Dance in Rochester, NY. As a member of the “Third Rail Duo” with guitarist-composer Joseph Douglass, she presented monthly recitals on the Sunday Afternoon Classical series at the Morgan Library and Museum for three seasons.
Deanna Cirielli
Harp
Deanna Cirielli is a versatile classical harpist across solo, orchestral, and chamber music performance. Native to Boston, Massachusetts, she grew up in the city’s vibrant music scene and found her musical voice early on in orchestra and opera settings. Her ensemble-focused background shapes her approach to novel musicmaking, and aims to program under-played gems or new compositions regularly in her performance practice.
She is currently a C.V. Starr Doctoral Fellow at the Juilliard School, and completed both of her previous degrees at Juilliard as well – all under the tutelage of Nancy Allen.
Some of her performance highlights include orchestral and concerti performances in venues across the globe, including Boston Symphony Hall, Alice Tully Hall, Royal Albert Hall, Berlin Philharmonie, Smetana Hall, the Rudolfium, Auditorio Nacional de Música in Madrid, and Centro Comercial Miguel Debiles in Valladolid. Most recently, she completed a summer of solo, chamber, and orchestral performances at the Tanglewood Music Center this past summer, and has spent previous years playing at the Aspen Music Festival, Bowdoin International Music Festival, and Brevard Music Center.
Julie Roset
Soprano
Grand Winner of the Metropolitan Opera Laffont Competition in 2022, soprano Julie Roset began her vocal studies at an early age joining the Conservatoire du Grand Avignon going on to graduate with honors from the Haute Ecole de Musique de Genève in 2019. She was awarded her artist diploma in Opera Studies from the Juilliard School in 2022.
Making her mark on the operatic stage early in her career, Julie Roset has appeared as Papagena in Die Zauberflöte at Opéra de Toulon and she made her Paris debut as Amour in Mondonville’s Titon & l’Aurore with Les Arts Florissants and William Christie at L’Opéra Comique. Appearances at the Festival d’Aix-en-Provence include both Valletto and Amore in L’Orfeo under the baton of Leonardo García Alarcón and as Clorinde in Il Combattimento, la théorie du cygne noir, a musical journey through the Italian baroque conducted by Sebastien Daucé. She sang the role of Amour in Les Indes Galantes at Opéra Royal de Versailles as well as at the Beaune Festiva and appeared as Euridice in performances of Rossi’s Orfeo at the Juilliard.
Jemina Brechoire
Pianist
Jemina is a composer, pianist, vocalist and producer based in New York City. She is a Berklee College of Music alumni where she entered with a Presidential Scholarship to pursue studies in Piano Performance.
Jemina was born and raised in Europe, in a Franco-Algerian family and moved the US in 2017; having been exposed from a young age to multiple cultures and music it is without surprise that Jemina's compositions can be described as cross-cultural or multi-cultural, creating a music at the intersection of classical, jazz, electronic, avant-garde, North African folklore and more.
Although her first instrument is piano, Jemina started developing an interest for the voice early on; listening to jazz records she discovered scat through Ella Fitzgerald and is, still to this day, fascinated by the power and emotional intensity vocalists can deliver even with a wordless approach to music. A lot of Jemina's music pays tribute to that vocal jazz legacy and to the artists (Ella Fitzgerald, Meredith Monk...) that have been reclaiming the voice as an instrument.
Her passion for multicultural music and music crossing genres lead her to co-write with avant-garde composer Dai Fujikura or arrange for Grammy Awards nominee Tia Fuller among others.
Jemina is pursuing a master's in Classical Composition under the direction of Susan Botti at the Manhattan School of Music.
Yann Chemali
Yann Chemali was born in Cleveland, Ohio, and has been playing cello since age four. At the age of 12, he and his family moved to Virginia Beach, Virginia, where he would attend the Governor’s School for the Arts. Yann completed his undergraduate in Music Performance at McGill University, where he studied under Matt Haimovitz. While at McGill, Chemali participated in Haimovitz’s cello ensemble, Uccello, and has given performances in Los Angeles, Toronto, Montreal, and Berlin. Yann is currently pursuing a Performance Diploma in Solo Performance at Indiana University Jacobs School of Music, studying under pedagogue Peter Stumpf.
Shaleah Feinstein
Violin
Shaleah Feinstein, originally from San Francisco, recently finished her Master’s degree at The Juilliard School where she studied with Areta Zhulla, first violinist of The Juilliard String Quartet. Acting as Jon Batiste’s first call violinist and string contractor, she is continuing her time in New York City. Shaleah completed her undergraduate studies at the Cleveland Institute of Music studying under world-renowned violinist, Ilya Kaler. She performed with orchestras such as the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra and many others across the country.
Amer Hasan
Clarinet
Born in Chicago, Palestinian-American clarinetist Amer Hasan maintains a balanced career as a recitalist, chamber musician, orchestral player, and educator. Through his performances, Amer showcases his tenacity as an artist and citizen by creating an immersive and visceral concert experience. Performing and teaching classical music has led him to engage with audiences all over the world, including performances across the U.S., Latin America, Europe, and Jordan.
A winner of the 2021 Astral National Competition, Amer has performed as a soloist with the Oistrakh Symphony of Chicago, the Brevard Music Center Orchestra, and the Akron Symphony Orchestra. He has received top awards in the Vandoren Emerging Artist Competition, the Yamaha Young Performing Artists Competition, and the Jan and Beattie Wood Concerto Competition, among others. In October 2023, Amer will be featured as a soloist in Aaron Copland's Clarinet Concerto with the Bucks County Symphony Orchestra.
As a chamber musician, Amer has won top prizes at the Fischoff and M-Prize chamber music competitions. His collaboration with other musicians is often centered on the creation and performance of new music. He was the clarinetist of the Aspen Contemporary Ensemble in 2021 and subsequently premiered over a dozen new works for chamber ensembles. Upcoming projects include performances with Ensemble Phoenicia, a new NYC-based ensemble dedicated to performing contemporary classical music by Middle Eastern composers.
Sami Seif is a Lebanese composer and music theorist praised as “a distinctive compositional voice” who creates “intoxicating and fascinating soundworld[s].” His music is inspired by the aesthetics, philosophies, paradigms and poetry of his Middle-Eastern heritage. His work has been described as “very tasteful and flavorful” with “beautiful, sensitive writing!”. His latest musical concerns center around the phenomenology of time.
Originally from the town of Ashkout in Lebanon and is currently pursuing his doctoral studies at the CUNY Graduate Center. Seif’s music has been performed by world-renowned artists and has been recognized internationally by numerous institutions.
Wajdi Samir Abou Diab, an artistic visionary hailing from Lebanon, draws inspiration from his dual cultural background in Arabic Levantine and Western classical music. born in Lebanon in 1991 and graduated from the Lebanese National Higher Conservatory of Music (LNHCM) with diplomas in Piano and Music Composition. He has been recognized by the international music community through numerous accolades from competitions such as the first prize in the 2022 Emerging Composer Competition by Rising Tide Press and the International Women Brass Conference amongst many others.
Deemed a "Rising Star" by BBC Music Magazine, violinist and composer Layale Chaker was raised on the verge of several musical streams since her childhood. She debuted her musical training at the National Higher Conservatory of Beirut in her native Lebanon, and later went on to pursue her studies at Conservatoire Regional de Paris and the Royal Academy of Music in London. Layale's musical world lies at the intersection of classical contemporary music, Jazz, Arabic Music, and improvisation. As a violinist and composer, she has received commissions and presented performances and projects around Europe, the Middle-East, North and South America and Asia.
Mary Kouyoumdjian is a composer and documentarian with projects ranging from concert works to multimedia collaborations and film scores. As a first generation Armenian-American and having come from a family directly affected by the Lebanese Civil War and Armenian Genocide, she uses a sonic palette that draws on her heritage, interest in music as documentary, and background in experimental composition to progressively blend the old with the new. A strong believer in freedom of speech and the arts as an amplifier of expression, her compositional work often integrates recorded testimonies with resilient individuals and field recordings of place to invite empathy by humanizing complex experiences around social and political conflict.
Saad Haddad (b. 1992) is a composer that achieves a “remarkable fusion of idioms” (New York Times), most notably in his work exploring the disparate qualities inherent in Western art music and Middle Eastern musical tradition.
Dr. Haddad’s orchestral works have been performed by the Minnesota Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic, amongst many others. He has also received performances by the JACK Quartet, Locrian Chamber Players, Tanglewood Music Festival, and Utah Arts Festival, and his works have been performed abroad in China, Brazil, Britain, Germany, France, Italy, South Korea, Austria, Sweden, and Canada.
100% of ticket proceeds will be donated to Doctor's without Borders (MSF).
Ticket to the immersive performance + post-event reception
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