AlbumRelease date:
24.03.2017
John Kameel Farah
Time Sketches
Baroque counterpoint, Arabic melodies and rhythms, free improvisation, ambient minimalism, and all forms of electronic dance music — these are all tools that pianist-composer John Kameel Farah uses in his music, in a compositional approach one could call “Maximalism”. Both a virtuosic pianist and imaginative electronic producer, Farah layers colourful sounds and poly-rhythms to build other-wordly orchestral landscapes. More than a collection of tracks, Time Sketches is more like a symphonic cycle in 10-movements, culminating in the final “Fantasia” which stylistically spans several centuries. Using the piano alongside an array of synthesizers and electronics, Farah represents a new generation of North-American composers, whose intensely expressive style allows dramatic narratives to co-exist alongside abstraction and complexity. Recording Time Sketches was a huge experiment for John Farah. The album revolves around the sprawling 12-minute Fantasia, which was originally commissioned by the Western Front Society in Vancouver. John revised and recorded this work for Neue Meister, and composed the other nine tracks in only a month (a process that would normally take years) in a concert hall by the forest in Hannover. This special setting and circumstance comes through in the unique atmosphere and dramatic arch of the whole album. As Farah is also a prolific visual artist, Time Sketches comes with a booklet containing a different ink drawing to accompany each piece.
Videos
Artist
John Kameel Farah
John Kameel Farah is a composer, pianist and visual artist based between Toronto and Berlin. He studied composition and piano performance at the University of Toronto, where he received the Glenn Gould Composition Award twice. In 1999 he had private lessons with Terry Riley, and later studied at the Arabic Music Retreat in Hartford. In 1998, he performed the solo piano works of Arnold Schoenberg in Toronto, and most recently, an electronified version of the first book of Bach’s "Well-Tempered Clavier" in Berlin.
Farah now focuses primarily on his own creative hybrid of improvisation, composition and electronic music. Still active as a pianist, he often mixes classical works into his programs, with a special passion for the music of William Byrd and other renaissance keyboard composers.
Simultaneously using piano, synthesizer, computer, and at times harpsichord and organ, his solo performances exist between the worlds of the concert hall and the electronic producer, mixing forays into experimental improvisation, jazz, electro–acoustics, middle-eastern modes and rhythms with electronic genres such as Techno and Drum & Bass.
More releases
