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Eastern Meditations

Soeur Marie Keyrouz and Ensemble de la Paix

M/6

20 Jun 2015 - 22:00

Open Air Auditorium

Admission 18 €

The more we learn how to affect the reality of our being by the beautiful and the sacred, the more we offer to human experience the privilege to live the infinite spirituality, which lives in our inner self and is the origin of everything. A prayer of Jesus Christ, one philosopher's reflection or mystic poetry – these meditations are chosen and sung to enlighten the candle that leads each human being’s way through their pilgrimage towards their inner selves. These meditations find their musical inspiration in the Aramaic, Byzantine, Syriac and Maronite traditional liturgies, as well as in the micro-intervals of classical oriental music and the colors used to support the sacred text. The Musicians, soloists, are active participants in these prayers, both when they accompany the song, and when they improvise, echoing the voice that gives itself humanly, spiritually and technically to the performance. May we, for the elegance of these meditations, provide the human being with an encounter with the divine and be allowed to melt into the mystery of the silence and the eternal peace of God?

Soeur Marie Keyrouz

Soeur Marie Keyrouz

Ensemble de la Paix (Ensemble for Peace)

When Lebanon was being shattered by bombs (1984) and its greatest need was peace, Sister Marie Keyrouz was living in Beirut and dreaming of doing something to fight against her country being torn apart by the so-called religious war, by intolerance, the decline of culture and the disregard for all that was sacred. This is what made the nun, a musician, call on all her colleagues, from all the religions and rites of Lebanon, to gather around holy music and try to defeat the evil and ugliness of war with all that was spiritual and beautiful – and that was the inception of the "Ensemble for Peace". Monks or laymen, in the beginning, they were all from Lebanon. Within three years of its birth, the nun had succeeded in inducting musicians from all the Near and Middle-Eastern countries and all religious beliefs as members of her Ensemble. Doctorates in musicology and music, composers or simply professional musicians, whether in "Voice", "Ud", "Kanoun" or Eastern Sitar, "rhythm", "Nay" or bamboo flute, "kaman", etc., every instrumentalist or chorister found his or her special place in the Ensemble for Peace and joined in admirably both in improvisations and in accompanying Sister Marie Keyrouz' singing.