Shubho Lhaw Qolo means “glory to the voice” in Aramaic, the language spoken by Jesus Christ. The music is inspired by an adapted Christmas hymn by St. Ephrem the Syriac who lived in the fourth century. Modern settings of the text are commonly sung by Christian communities in both Aramaic and Arabic around Christmas season throughout the Middle-East.

One of the great mysteries and powers of music is that it can leave us feeling that musical time transcends clock time. Shubho Lhaw Qolo explores notions of timelessness as well as concurrent temporalities and directionalities. The notation reflects the superimposed, independent temporalities which operate at once in the music, thus barlines are not always shared by all instruments. The different time-layers integrate and interact with one another throughout the music, just as the different playing techniques do. Throughout the piece, different sounds come in and out of focus; textures, like colors, bleed into each other. The soloist and the orchestra operate on different and independent sonic universes at the beginning, however, as the piece progresses, they approach integration right up to the final cadence where they finally commune with my own re-harmonization of the classic “Amen”.

Performers:
Alyssa Warcup, solo viola
Philipp Elssner and Grégoire Miczka, violin
Mary Peyrebrune, viola
Andrew Shinn and Isabella Lorenzo-Giguere, cello
Drew Collins, double bass
Juan Riveros, harp
Albert Mackey and Zachary Courtney, percussion
Sami Seif, conductor

Shubho Lhaw Qolo-for Viola Sola and Ensemble (2019) | شوبحو لھاو قولو

Lebanese composer and music theorist Sami Seif (b. 1998) has been praised as “a distinctive compositional voice” who creates “intoxicating and fascinating soundworld[s]” (Carla Rees, Pan Journal of the British Flute Society). Described as “very tasteful and flavorful” with “beautiful, sensitive writing!” (Webster University Young Composers Competition), his music is inspired by the aesthetics, philosophies, paradigms and poetry of his Middle-Eastern heritage. His latest musical concerns center around the phenomenology of time and of differing degrees of focus.

A passionate and enthusiastic collaborator, Seif has worked with numerous renowned musicians. Previous and upcoming collaborators include Mary Kay Fink and Stanley Konopka of The Cleveland Orchestra, Vinay Parameswaran, Carla Rees, Marcelo Lehninger, the Kalamazoo Symphony Orchestra, the Odin Quartet, Amer Hasan, TEMPO Ensemble, Juan Riveros, Earplay, Ensemble 126, Ensemble Metamorphosis, Drew Hosler, Dustin White, and Lana Stafford, among others. Seif’s music has been recognized internationally by various institutions such  as ASCAP, SOCAN, the RED NOTE New Music Festival, the Metropolitan Youth Orchestra of New York, the New York Composers Circle, the Stamford Music and Arts Academy, the Foundation for Modern Music, the Ohio Federation of Music Clubs, the Cleveland Composer’s Guild, the Arizona Flute Society, Webster University, Abundant Silence, and Warren County Summer Music School, among others. Additionally, he was selected as a finalist for the 2019 Kaleidoscope Chamber Orchestra call for scores from a pool of more than 2200 applicants from more than 90 countries. In 2020, he was selected again from a larger pool of almost 8000 applicants.

Originally from the small town of Ashkout in Mount Lebanon, he was born to a non-musical family in Abu Dhabi and he is fluent in Arabic, French and English. He started out at the age of twelve as a self-taught musician, composing and playing on special, Arabic keyboards designed to accommodate the microtones of Arabic music. Not having had access to formal music education, Seif taught himself how to read and write music by reading theory textbooks. He later formally studied piano, composition, audio engineering, and sound synthesis.

Seif completed his BM, double-majoring in composition and music theory at the Cleveland Institute of Music, where, he was honored with the Donald Erb prize in composition and the Beth Pearce Nelson award in music theory upon graduation. He is currently a doctoral fellow at the CUNY Graduate Center, studying with Jason Eckardt, Bruce Saylor, and David Schober. His former teachers include Julia Victorivna Podsekaeva (composition and piano), Roger Bergs (composition), Alan Reese (music theory), and Gerardo Teissonnière (piano).