A collaboration between John Kameel Farah and Thomas Brinkmann

Also released on a 2020 compilation by Morphine Records called The Sacred Rage.

Sans Titre - John Kameel Farah & Thomas Brinkmann

A piece of music for my mother, Nadia Farah.

One Aspect Of Nadia

Lake Trasimene (or, Blade Runner in Babylon):
An improvisation (or Taqsim) set in the Arabic/Middle-Eastern mode "Huzam" in which the root of the scale is a quarter tone, realized on re-tuned synthesizers.
The title 'Lake Trasimene' comes from one of the locations in ancient Italy where Hannibal Barca engaged with Rome; the idea of reverberations traveling across the surface of still water before some calamitous event. 
An alternate title (actually the original title) is "Blade Runner in Babylon" which reflects my interest in combining older musical systems with futuristic, or Sci-Fi aesthetics.

Lake Trasimene (Blade Runner in Babylon)

Staircase is the bonus track from my most recent album "Time Sketches" released this year Neue Meister label. 
It is only available over iTunes.
To order/stream/download the album, visit:
nm.lnk.to/TimeSketchesFA

Staircase

A Fugue-Fantasy for solo piano, preview track from upcoming album.

The theme of this is inspired by a small section in the middle of a Fantasy by William Byrd. It starts off in an imitative counterpoint, but unravels and transforms into something else, centuries away.

Fugal Metamorphosis (on a theme by W. Byrd)

William Byrd - Hugh Ashton's Ground
(also Hugh Ashtons Grownde)
played by John Kameel Farah

This recording was made on a keyboard tuned in a "quarter-comma mean-tone" temperament, leading to more pure and brilliant 3rds (so long as one avoids the combination G# / D#).

Grounds such as this piece are basically repeating harmonic cycles with continuous variation, a feature they share in common with jazz standards. The changes of this piece are A-, E+, F+, E+, G+ C+, E+, A+, but the fluid counterpoint and voice-leading often blur the "either/or" relationship between major and minor, leaning toward a more sweet and sour approach.

[*historical note, if you're into that sort of thing: this would have been originally played on a Virginal, not a Harpsichord.]

William Byrd - Hugh Ashton's Ground

from "Unfolding", Dross:tik Records, 2009

John Kameel Farah, piano, electronics
Nick Storring, cello
Fiona Ryan, clarinet
Rose Bolton, violin

www.johnfarah.com

Calling (of the Sea)

The Cataclysm

recorded for live broadcast by The Signal, CBC Radio 2
The Music Gallery, Toronto, 2008

Taksim is just the arabic word for improvisation - usually used for a solo instrumental improvisation, played somewhat freely like a poetic invocation, often named after the mode in which it is improvised in. This is played in a style that I have developed (or rather it just evolved by itself over many years of improvising) which I called the Atonal Maqam, although it is neither exclusively atonal, nor truly a Maqam in the strict sense of the word. The way I approach it is to have my left hand slowly "strumming" an aggregate of notes (they can be either tonal or atonal) which sort of resonate like a Tambour or drone, upon which the right hand, in an ornamental style, slowly "uncovers" a much larger structure that resonates over it. Something unveils itself that is both a giant arpeggiated chord and also a winding, asymmetrical scale. I think of it as akin to an archaeologist slowly dusting the earth and uncovering an artifact from another age or place.

Taqsim Farah

from the Distances EP, 2012, also part of Between Carthage and Rome.

full MP3 download of Distances EP with 6 remixes
available at:
johnkameelfarah.bandcamp.com/album/distances-ep

This piece was inspired by several was of looking at "Distances". 

Firstly, a conversation I had with a friend about the inconceivable distances between the planets, and interstellar objects. Secondly, another kind of distances - emotional and spiritual ones, the journeys we travel through life. Lastly, after reading of the harrowing journey over the Alps, enduring the relentless sun from above, and the piercing cold in the mountains.

Distances

I created Jinju Dervish when I travelled to Jinju, South Korea to make music with the "Unknown Strange Dance Company" - two choreographers whom I had worked with previously in Canada.  The melody came to me on the bus on the way from Seoul to Jinju, and since I had no piano immediately at hand, it became the only piece on my album "Unfolding" that was completely electronic, with no piano part. The drone-based melody is written using software synthesizers, in an altered Middle-Eastern scale that uses quarter-tones, specifically the third scale-degree is half-flat (for those interested, Maqam Rast in C but with a flattened Gb). In addition to the "traditional" breakbeats, breaks were also created out of Arabic percussion - notably the Riqq (tambourine).

Jinju Dervish

The final track from my album "Between Carthage and Rome".

A Sama'i is a rhythmic form found in Arabic/Turkish/Iranian classical music, set in a majestic 10/8 time (subdivided 3+2+2+3) which after several verses, goes into a faster section in a different rhythm. My piece is just using this form as a ground to then re-arrange and transform into something else, and deconstructs itself into a full-scale surrealistic piano concerto movement. In the beginning, one can hear a Nay (arabic flute), and towards the end, a pipe organ blazing in the background.

Sama'i Point

Breakcore/Jazz Fusion piece from Unfolding (2009) played on Fender Rhodes instead of piano. 

Here is a video of the same piece in live performance in Berlin, played on a piano:
http://youtu.be/apmxiJY23Rk

Uprising

The opening piece from Between Carthage and Rome.

Begins in an early contrapuntal style, intertwined with melodies of an arabic Nay, then exploding into arpeggios, forecasting some parts of the rest of the album.



Introitus

This piece for piano and electronics follows the opening track "Introitus" on Between Carthage and Rome.

It is a spritely dance in 7/8, and goes into a square, dubby section with a bouyant piano solo in the middle. 

Mercurial

Surus was the name of Hannibal's one-tusked elephant. He was the only elephant to survive the trek over the Alps.

This piece was recorded last, after I had finished recording and composing everything, and early in the morning still had some hours left alone in the studio. I created a drone with a dark frame drum, and layered piano upon piano on top of it, like a choir of flutes, and plucked and swished over the strings on the inside of the piano.

Surus

The album title track for Between Carthage and Rome. 

Beyond the obvious reference of the title, it's also inspired by story I read in an old history of the Crusades, in which there were eyewitness accounts of Arab and Frankish soldiers dancing with each other by the fires at night.

Between Carthage and Rome

Recording of John Kameel Farah's live performance from Roy Thompson Hall during the Toronto Symphony's New Creations Festival, March 7, 2013.
Presented by SoundStreams, as part of Farah's Residency with SoundMakers.

containing orchestral samples from the SoundMakers database; samples from pieces by Andrew Staniland, Peter Hatch, Kelly-Marie Murphy and James Rolfe

http://soundmakers.ca
http://www.soundstreams.ca



Soundscape from New Creations Festival, Mar26,2013 @ Roy Thompson Hall

A piano improvisation from 2012, recorded in Berlin on a Bechstein upright.

Improvisation on Stralsunder

The Atonal Maqam is a certain approach to improvisation that I sometimes like to use. I love it because it feels like coaxing the piano into a vibrating, glowing hum. The left hand creates a drone by strumming any combination of notes, while the right hand softly weaves an ornamental fabric above it, slowly uncovering a harmonic, chordal structure, often a long, symmetrical scale which winds its way up the piano's upper registers. I think of it as an archaeologist dusting off sand, to slowly unveil an artefact from the earth, or sometimes it also can sound a bit like birdcall. 

This improvisation was recorded from a concert at Musideum in Toronto. That day I decided to make an introductory explanation of the process to the audience, so I kept that on the recording for you to hear. The actual music starts at 3:30.

The Atonal Maqam (live @ Musideum, Toronto)

Flock was commissioned by the Morgenvogel Festival, to write a piece for voices that was inspired by birds. It was performed by Vox Nostra, an early music vocal ensemble that also performs new music, as well as John Kameel Farah on organ and synthesizer.
This live recording is from the premiere performance at the Zionskirche in Berlin in June 2012.

The various voices sing patterns which are loosely notated, and the singers imitate and follow each other, in the manner of a flock of birds. Sometimes the group reads from  sketched ideas, more like a graphic score, and other times singers choose and improvise from suggested motifs, fitting together in a common pulse. Sometimes sentimental and sorrowful, other times a bit cheeky (or, tongue-in-beak ;-)

Visit also http://vox-nostra.de

"Flock" for voices, synthesizer & organ

John Kameel Farah is a composer and pianist based between Berlin and Toronto. He studied composition and piano performance at the University of Toronto, where he received the Glenn Gould Composition Award twice during his studies. In 1999 he had private lessons with Terry Riley in California, and later at the Arabic Music Retreat in Hartford. In 1998, he performed the complete solo piano works of Arnold Schoenberg in Toronto. Toronto’s NOW Magazine named his as Best Pianist 2006. John received the 2011 K.M. Hunter Artist Award for Music from the Ontario Arts Council.

Farah now focuses primarily on his own creative hybrid of improvisation, composition and electronic music. Simultaneously using piano, synthesizer, computer, and at times harpsichord, his solo performances exist somewhere between the concert hall and an experimental DJ set, mixing forays into free improvisation, jazz, electro–acoustics, middle-eastern modes, and ambient minimalism and distilling them into cohesive, surrealistic structures. 

Farah performs regularly in Berlin and Toronto, and has toured internationally across the U.K., Europe, USA, Canada, the Middle–East, Brazil, South Korea and Mexico. In 1999 and 2002, he visited the Edward Said National Conservatory in the West Bank, giving performances and masterclasses in Ramallah, East Jerusalem and Bethlehem. 
His newest solo album is called Time Sketches, released on the Neue Meister label. He collaborates with Peggy Baker Dance Projects, and in 2016 won a Dora Mavor Moore Award for his work with choreographer Peggy Baker. He has also been a member of the Canadian Electronic Ensemble since 2009.

JohnKameelFarah

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