PRÉSENTATION

In this monographic disc devoted to the composer Zad Moultaka, Joel Suhubiette and the elements, (one of the most prominent choirs currently Victoire de la Musique 2006, Liliane Bettencourt Prize – Academy of Fine Arts of the Institut de France – … ), present a collection of recent vocal pieces, “forming a coherent sound universe, (…) characterized by a subtle writing (…) and accompanied by an intense sound poetry” (Makis Solomos)

1. Khat- (2007) 9’35 – Three calligraphies for eighteen singers for mixed choir a cappella
2. La Scala del cielo (2006) 8’02 – for mixed choir, piano and percussion
3. Zikr (2003) 9’57 – pour contralto, chœur mixte et ensemble
4. Neb Ankh (2007) 9’58 – for contralto, mixed chorus and ensemble
5-13. Enluminures (2004) 10’37 – for nine women’s voices
14. Vision (2007) 10’54 – pour chœur mixte et voix enregistrées

1. Khat (2007) 9’35 – Three calligraphies for eighteen singers – for a cappella mixed choir
Phonèmes arabes

Zad Moultaka is experimenting here with a new writing principle. Working neither on the signified, nor on the signifier, nor on the meaning of words, nor on their sonority, it is the letters that compose the text that serve as a canvas for musical writing. The composer follows each line, full, untied, each accentuation of the words that make up the Arabic poem. In Orient, calligraphy is connected to thought. It is depository of an “occult”, independent knowledge. This dimension has been absent little by little in the West, for the sole benefit of the understanding. Joining here the force of the neume, noting the Gregorian chant of the eighth century (from the Greek pneuma, breath), the musical work draws on this abstraction a new sound reality.

2. La Scala del cielo (2006) 8’02 – for mixed choir, piano and percussionAfter The Book of the Dead of the Ancient Egyptians – Sung in Italian Order of the choir chamber les elements

This piece plunges the choir into an underground sound world , crossed by telluric currents, plunged into the darkness, the dust, where are born intimate and strange reflections. The work on voice timbres and harmonics operates a transformation of song and speech. The text, taken from the Ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead (Black Earth), is embellished with ancient sounds from the piano. Here and Elsewhere.

3. Zikr (2003) 9’57 – for contralto, mixed chorus and ensemble
Tribute to Gérard Velay
On Audi Coelum, anonymous text of the sixteenth century, Salve Regina and Psalms
Sung in Latin
Order of l’ensemble Ex Tempore (Belgium)
Commissioned and created in May 2003 in Ghent then in Amsterdam by the Flemish ensemble Ex Tempore and Fadia Tomb el Hage, Zikr, inspired by Monteverdi’s Selva Morale, crosses several vocal traditions: from the birth of lyrical art, sensual polyphonies from this period, to Byzantine chant. The voices of women complain moaning, echo of the mourners Mediterranean. These “lamentations” slowly change, widen until they break a revolt in the form of a dance and stirring the pagan background that survives in us. A bass drum, a recurring element in the works of Zad Moultaka, tells the story of this power rise between rebellion and prayer.

4. Neb Ankh (2007) 9’58 – for fixed voices and sounds
Text inspired by the Book of Shou, the book of light, extracted from the Texts of the Sarcophagi of the Ancient Egyptians.
Sang in imaginary language
This piece in three movements, is a work on the melisma, oriental lines and all the possibilities and resources of voice, speech, energy. Like a modern Nefertiti, during her last trip to an Egyptian sarcophagus, the singer carries with her the objects she has loved in her life, and their sound environment: kitchen utensils, cosmetics, sounds of today, music, a fragrance of Arab songs …

5-13. Enluminures (2004) 10’37 – for nine women’s voices
Georges Shehade’s poems – Excerpts from Poems I (1938), Poems II (1948) and Poems III
(1949) © Gallimard
Song in French
Order from Monique Velay.
It is about nine vocal miniatures. Nine sound images, fugitive, almost echoing, from a distant and idyllic time. They draw their poetry and inspiration from the traditional vocal techniques of the rural world and villages. Nine illustrations, ornamentations, print of tenderness that could have been naive if they were not carved by old wounds and a reflection on the deep nature of “exile”.

14. Vision (2007) 10’54 – pour for mixed choir and recorded voices
Text by Catherine Peillon – extract from Helen and the clouds (theater) © ŠamaŠ
Sung in French
This piece is born in the wake of another (not present in this recording). It is about “Exquisite corpse” where is used a live process of recording and diffusion of each of the parts which compose it, creating a vocal overlapping effect questioning the immediate memory and awaking the deep memory, the one that the forgetfulness usually protects. Here the work is done on the five pieces of the disc – Zikr, La Scala del Cielo, Illuminations, Neb Ankh, Khat – whose composer extracts waves, sound energies, and strange lines of escape that he writes in a soundtrack. A cappella choir sings a new text like a gold thread, along a line where the vertical and the horizontal intersect, unfold, vaporously. As if one is knotting embroidery work with silk patterns, relief figures, assorted colors, diaprées colors, playing with harmonies.

They are bound to become one: the Lebanese composer Zad Moultaka (born in 1967) and Les Eléments choir founded and directed by Joël Suhubiette, a French vocal ensemble (Toulouse), with virtuosity and an exceptional commitment. Under the title of the last CD piece (poem by Catherine Peillon), Moultaka’s “Visions” explore this quivering space between sound and meaning, called “poetry” (Valéry), based on immemorial texts – in Latin, in French, in Italian, in Arabic phonemes, in imaginary language – to develop a world in itself. The pure sound operates there at least as much as the language, thanks to the refinements of the writing and the quality of the performers, sometimes joined by the magical alto of Fadia Tom El-Hage or the instrumental ensemble Ars Nova. Superb booklet signed Makis Solomos and Renaud Ego (French, English and Arabic) .
La Libre Belgique, Martine DUMONT MERGEAY, February 11, 2009

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Visions 5 diapason
January 2009

Composer of Lebanese origin, Zad Moultaka reinvests his cultural heritage with his firmly mastered knowledge of art music.

A choral conductor of Western tradition, curious as Joel Suhubiette, blossoms in this universe as subtle as it is required and does not seem to have any difficulty in convincing twenty-two of these elements to attempt the adventure with ardor and a remarkable precision. Six recent pieces (2003-2007) form a coherent monographic proposal, which is supported by the first Arabic phonemes of Khat, where the art of calligraphy induces writing, musical at this time. LLa Scala del cielo, an echo in Italian of the Ancient Egyptians’ Book of the Dead, recalls with its bomb releases and plaintive lines that Moultaka is a child of the Lebanon war. In Zikr, a chorus of lamentations, sometimes the way of Mediterranean mourners, responds to the prayer carried by the captivating voice of Fadia Tomb el-Hage, who is then wandering without getting lost in the middle of the “concrete” sounds of Neb Ankh. Enluminures is a collection of miniatures composed of poems by French-Lebanese poet Georges Schehadé: nine images that nine feminine a cappella elements showsimmediately and strikingly . The album ends with a vision where the mixed choir dialogue with its own voices recorded on the previous pieces, a process that could turn to gadget if the elements did not exhibit such continuity in the sound.
Benoît Fauchet, Diapason, January 2009

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Visions 4 starts Le Monde de la Musique
Le Monde le musique, december 2008 4 starts

From his native Lebanon, Zad Moultaka has kept the spirit that manifests itself in a constant questioning of cultural boundaries and the choice of a language tending towards conciliation, while ignoring the dubious universalism of certain aesthetic currents. His self-taught position can only be seen in the naturalness of the vocal flow and the color variations. As Makis Solomos observes in the introduction, there is an analogy with the musical journey of a Xenakis. Naturally, in Zad Moultaka, some elements remind of Arabic music melted with memories of the Gregorian (as in the Scala del cielo or in Zikr) blending into a sound and a very original conduct. The continuity of the scales, their character linked to the expression extend, in the “western” way to the domain of the tone, perfectly highlighted by the chamber choir Les Éléments directed by Joël Suhubiette, as well as by the contralto Fadia Tomb el-Hage (whose Latin becomes, in the context, a true artistic argument). Costin Cazaban, Le Monde de la Musique, December 2008

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Zad Moultaka, medium in the service of music, Now Lebanon, Hiam Yared

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Zad Moultaka, Successful trip on another vocal planet, ResMusica, September 2008, Hubert Stoecklin