Composer, singer, and oud player Kamilya Jubran is one of the leading figures of the experimental Arab music scene. She grew up in Al Rameh, a Palestinian village in Galilee in the north of Israel. Raised by her music loving parents, she was introduced and initiated to classical Arabic music in particular by her father, music teacher and instrument maker Elias Jubran.
At the Pierre Boulez Saal, Jubran will present two facets of her diverse artistic output: together with her longtime artistic partner, Swiss trumpeter and sound artist Werner Hasler, she presents Extend WA, an improvised musical dialog that emerged from their joint album WA (Arabic for “and”). In the second part of the evening, cellist Soizic Lebrat and bassist Charlotte Testu will expand the duo into a quartet for the world premiere of the new work Bast (Arabic for “extend” or “expand”).
At the age of 18 Kamilya made her move to Jerusalem, where she studied at the Hebrew University, and simultaneously explored new musical pathways by joining the Sabreen ensemble based in East Jerusalem. With the group she recorded four albums and toured in many local as well as international towns and cities.
Two very intense decades of work with the group eventually urged her to deepen her musical research and reshape her artistic identity. In 2002 Kamilya moved to Europe, first to Switzerland and a year later to Paris, where she is still based. In 2014 she founded the Zamkana association, a non-profit organization that supports and accompanies innovative artistic projects while upholding the values of freedom of expression and secularism.
