On Friday 28 April, CondeDuque, in collaboration with Casa Árabe, is organising a performance by Lebanese pianist Bachar Mar-Khalifé, who will be presenting his latest album, On/Off, in the capital at 8:30 pm.
Bachar Mar-Khalifé continues the tradition of goldsmiths of melody in Arab culture. Born in Lebanon in 1983, but living in Paris since the age of six, this young musical talent without frontiers is driven by an instinct for beauty, by the poetry of a centuries-old culture which, on his keyboard, discovers new forms of life to the point of opening up a future where emotion is claimed naked, without labels.
Singer, composer and lute virtuoso, this pianist trained at the National Conservatory of Music and Dance in Paris with his brother Rami Khalifé and then released his first album, Oil Slick, a true declaration of intent that took him ten years to create. After subsequent albums and collaborations with groups such as the Orchestre National de France and the Ensemble Intercontemporain, and artists as diverse as Bojan Z, Carl Craig, Francesco Tristano, Murcof, Kery James, Chapelier Fou, Christophe and the trio K/D/M., Bachar premieres his fifth album, On/Off, recorded in his family home in northern Beirut, in Madrid.
The recording was made in December 2019, to the rhythm of the popular protests that shook Lebanon and, in his own way, the musician contributes to it with this new work, as emotions are released with his own message. The album consists of 11 tracks, written and composed in that home, as well as a duet recorded in 2017 with Christophe. The compositions move between harmonic jazz feelings, Lebanese melodies, electronic gestures and a deep and strange beauty and vindication for life. Tickets for the concert are on sale online at this link.
