Christine Sehnaoui

Born in 1978 and living in France, Christine is from lebanese origins. It is with the discovering of improvised music in 1997 that Christine Sehnaoui decided to start her own autodidact study of sound experimentation on the alto saxophone.
She creates a personal language on how to make electronic music on an acoustic instrument. Far away from narrative or dramatic music, her music tries to deal with the relation between listening and the concept of perception, time and space. With deep sensitivity, she develops extended techniques and complex patterns, exploring the microtonal aspects of the saxophone or the high-pitched tone. She produces nifty tonguing tricks, unpitched breaths, spittle-flecked growls, biting, slicing notes or breathy echoey sounds from the bell of her horn.
Her main musical partners include Sharif Sehnaoui, Michel Waisvisz, Stéphane Rives, Mazen Kerbaj, Michael Zerang, Mathias Forge, Olivier Toulemonde, Pascal Battus, Basile Ferriot and many others.
For the past few years, she has been working with dancers ( Buto and contemporary dance) and she also undertakes an ungoing research on musical pedagogy (concerts for children, intervention in schools).
Besides, since 2001, she contibutes to develop impovisation in her country of origins, Lebanon, where she co-organizes the annual festival of improvised music in Lebanon, called « Irtijal ».
For more infos : www.irtijal.org
She has study sociology and she works in an independent DVD label of experimental cinema (LOWAVE), whose objective is to discover and promote contemporary film and video art. Recently, she has released two DVDs called "Résistance(s)", compilations of arab experimental videos.
For more infos : www.lowave.com
RELEASED ON :
MASLAKH 08
SHORTWAVE
SEHNAOUI | WAISWISZ
Christine Sehnaoui | alto sax
Michel Waisvisz | the hands
recorded in october and november 2006 at the groupe de recherche musicale (GRM) paris.
Christine Sehnaoui and Michel Waiswisz, met in Sweden in September 2006 when they performed a trio with percussionist Sven-Ã…ke Johansson (this music can be heard on the Beirut-Ystad / Olof Bright CD16/17). They kept on working together until the present days whenever that was possible.
The highlight of their collaboration could be several full days of recording at the famous GRM studios in Paris at 2 different periods during the year 2007. Selecting the music that you will hear on this CD has surely been the hardest part of the entire process. There was so much interesting and different material available that narrowing them down to an hour seemed an impossible task. There have been as much as 6 different versions of the recording, many of them with no single track in common, and all of them seemed perfect in the moment.
The final decision was made after the artists gave the label this responsibility. We hope to have made the most out of the material at hand.
Reviews from All about Jazz
The Lebanese label Al Maslakh produced this unusual recording by Dutch electronics master Michel Waisvisz and Lebanese saxophonist (by way of Paris) Christine Sehnaoui. That's right a label from Beirut, Al Maslakh (meaning The Slaughterhouse), has released some impressive projects. This is a collaboration recorded in 2007. Unfortunately Waisvisz, just shy of his 60th birthday, has since passed away. He plays his own creation, "the hands," an electronic interface that he places over his hands, allowing him to invoke movement into music making. His wow and flutter can build to thunderous noise or linger at sizzling points. Waisvisz, who has collaborated with the likes of Shelley Hirsch, DJ Spooky, Richard Teitelbaum, and Steve Lacy, creates sounds not unlike those of early Raymond Scott electronic experimentation, rumbling sometimes cartoonish noises. His human/electric interface via his hands dares you to guess where the man stops and the electronics begin. Paired with Sehnaoui, the sounds gel. The saxophonist is adept at the microtonal aspects of the saxophone. She produces biting, slicing notes or breathy echoey sounds from the bell of her horn. Sometimes her playing reminds you of that of Bhob Rainey or Michel Doneda. Their is a equanimity and patience to her playing that is born out of self control.
Reviews from TOKAFI.COM
Maybe this is not so recent as it seems, but the liner notes are written in the present tense: "Micheal Waisvisz is a key figure in the live electronics scene', which is true, but Waisvisz died in June of this year. However what is correct is that Waisvisz never released much of his music. On top of my head I only know a LP from the mid to late seventies. Here he plays 'the hands', one of his better known inventions of live sampling and by stretching his arms and hands he could alter the sound. He teams up for 'Shortwave' with Christine Sehnaoui who plays alto saxophone. There are six pieces of lively and wild improvisation. Sehnaoui's saxophone bends in all sorts of directions, while Waisvisz bends things a bit further all the time. Totally free play among these two, and most of the times its hard to hear who is doing what, or one hears sounds that aren't easy to understand (is that voice? I noted down). Quite energetic and wild, but there are also moments of introspection, relaxing and a gentle flow. These moments are rare, but provide a fine counterpoint in all the mayhem going on here. Quite fascinating, and quite an attack on the senses.
Posted by Massimo Ricci
This splendid music originates from a series of recordings captured at the notorious GRM studios in Paris in two different periods of 2007. Christine Sehnaoui (alto sax) and the late Michel Waisvisz (playing The Hands, one of his weird self-made instruments designed to pilot synth modules) amassed such a quantity of material during these sessions that, reportedly, six versions of the program were considered for release. Judging from the fascinatingly transfixing animation of the sounds concocted, this writer could probably have accepted a sextuple - but let’s be thankful anyway for a single disc’s worth of improvised radiance.The determinant factor in attributing a magna cum laude mark to Shortwave is the tightness of the conversation between the musicians, who appear at the apex of their edifice of receptiveness throughout. Although digressions and contrasts are firmly at the basis of a shrewd analysis of timbral multiplicity there’s a definite inner apparatus at work, fuelled by lucid organization and instant configuration. Sehnaoui is a proficient saxophone surveyor who manages to find pictographic sides even in the harsher facets of her playing; the ability of eliciting sweet-sounding venom in disparate contexts and a swift sensitivity to conditions of extreme variability are but two of the numerous resources that she brings to the table. Waisvisz is a demanding partner in that sense, a gatherer of impulsive spills and unsentimental twists that rarely allow the listener to individuate familiar eventualities. Yet he’s also the holder of an uncharacteristic sort of sympathy, every discharge organically projected in the surrounding environment, spontaneously delineating a deeper conception of the acoustic phenomenon.The mixture is unmistakably successful, gravity and irony easily living together over the course of the record; there are occasions in which distinguishing gurgling sublingual flutters from obstreperous synthetic patchworks is not exactly unproblematic. Recognizable features in the originality of an artistic pairing to which, unfortunately, we will only be able to listen again by preserving this gorgeous CD among the best specimens of enthrallingly munificent free improvisation.
UNDECIDED, A FAMILY AFFAIR
CREATIVES SOURCES
ROUBA3I
AL MASLAKH ( www.almaslakh.org)
Selected between the 12 best jazz & Improv albums of 2005 by Wire magazine.
Each member of the trio has pared away all obvious instrumental attributes, resulting in sound sources effectively geared to realise a shared musical vision of grainy agitated textures overlaid, overlapped and intersecting. Abstracted sounds seep and trickle, punctuated with pops and staccato chatter, across two pieces that are remarkably consistent in character and quality.
Julian Cowley | The WIRE
The recording consists of two substantive improvisations recorded at the Bustros residence in Beirut. What's most impressive about it is the way the very distinct musical personalities combine to create an atmosphere rich with tension. Sharif Sehnaoui's grainy string and pickup manipulations merge wonderfully with Zach's massive textural shapes to form a lush quilt on which the horns can stitch arch patterns. The altoist impressively displays her control of altissimo playing, emerging as a really distinctive voice in this generally low, earthen, organic music (Zach's rubbed tom heads are always delightful to listen to). She gets into a marvelous space with an especially flatulent Kerbaj midway through the first piece, as guitarist Sehnaoui angers an insect hive and Zach dives into subsonar depths. The second piece is still scrapey, slithering, and mostly non-idiomatic, but there is some movement that - relative to the rest of the stuff - can be heard as more idiomatically rhythmic or harmonic. For the most part, however, this is music of long droning passages pregnant with detail and glowing with an intensity that is never given vent. This tension, as if watching clouds gather, makes for some truly fine listening. These records will be difficult to find but are worth the search.
Jason Bivins - dustedmagazine.com
Using only acoustic instruments, the four members of Rouba3i5 create two multi-faceted improvisations that, perhaps unsurprisingly, aren’t reminiscent of any Middle Eastern sounds. Most impressive is the shorter—well less than 17 minutes—track, “Bustros Session 2”, which, recorded with no cuts and no overdubbing, shows that the four have relaxed into rapprochement. Launched by a punch from Zach’s bass drum, followed by percussive rumbles and accents, the piece modulates into squeaks from the trumpet and tongue-slaps from the alto saxophone. S. Sehnaoui then elaborates these statements with buzzing feints and what sounds like a drum stick hitting the front of his strings. Splayed strums then characterize his output as C. Sehnaoui expels cavernous blows and the drummer counters with woodpecker-like battering. When Zach transforms those smacks into road drill pressure, the alto squeals as the guitar advances the sort of metallic drones that could emanate from exposed telephone wires. Eventually these pulsations blend into one another, reaching a climax of irregular pitches, sharp oscillations, and constricted cries, as Zach delineates an ending with his finger tips rubbing the drum tops. Earlier, the almost-23-minute first selection is weakened by hushed passages that appear to lose volume due to lack of direction rather than as a stratagem. Luckily this happens infrequently, but some of the output could be a rehearsal for the finer points made in the second track. Oddly enough, C. Sehnaoui seems bolder here, with a catalogue of gestures that take in grace note expansion plus reed-pops and tongue-slaps. Mixing parakeet-like chirping with altissimo shrills, her sonic space is often invaded by amplifier drones and whammy bar distortions from the guitarist, abrasive scraping and woodpecker patterns from the drummer, and bubbling tones and bumpy spetrofluctuation from trumpeter Kerbaj.
Ken Waxman | One Final Note
A truly engrossing release, revealing sincere communion among four level-headed artists.
Massimo Ricci | touching extreme
The highly experimental approach of the host trio encourages a sonic exploration along the parameters of noise typology. All manner of sources, objects and techniques are used towards the creation of a sound collage. In other instances, more textural, fricative threads are woven into agglutinating tapestries of deeper color and density
Pedro Lopez | modisti.com
They make no references to traditional Middle Eastern music; in fact, the players are so inclined towards extended technique that it's hard to tell who is making which sounds. And somewhat beside the point -- this is collective music, concerned with texture and impact, not individual instrumental statements. My favorite moment comes about halfway through the second of two tracks, when they break through an episode of "sounds-like" playing -- if you walked in on the cd unawares, you might think you were hearing a field recording off urban warfare -- and into a gorgeously layered array of sustained sounds, each as colorful as rays of light glancing off polluted air just before the sun goes down. Harshness and beauty, inextricably interwoven -- you can't ask for more.
Bill Meyer | Signal To Noise
BEIRUT/ YSTAD
OLOF BRIGHT ( www.olofbright.com)
SOLO
OLOF BRIGHT (www.olofbright.com)
" (...) Waves of polytonal freedom and poetic beauty... lines of noise clusters and complex patterns... She is sculpting her sounds around a microtonal hub, transforming slow melodies into free improvised structures and drama (...) a new language - with a totally new concept on how to produce sounds and noises from an acoustic instrument (...) making electronic music on acoustic instrument..." MATS GUSTAFSSON
CEDARHEAD
AL MASLAKH
Participant two years running in Irtijal, Beirut’s improvised music festival (see CODA 323), Chicago percussionist Michael Zerang recorded these duos with seven Lebanese players during his second visit. The resulting CD is not only a fascinating document of a little-heard musical scene, but also proof that provocative sounds can arise in an isolated, war-torn country.Product of one of the Middle East’s most sophisticated cultures, the Beirut improvisers make their statements using everything from guitar, trumpet and saxophone to futuristic electronics to the traditional wind instrument, the nay. Zerang, whose arsenal ranges from the standard drum kit to miscellaneous percussion, includes in it the darbuka or North African hourglass-shaped drum used to accompany belly dancers, to make a memorable connection with musicians..Trumpeter Mazen Kerbaj, whose approach involves rolling and bubbling tongue bubbles, grace note buffers and capillary brays, generates a measured response from Zerang, who uses abrasive drum top pitter patter press rolls and cymbal rasps. Matched with the fading in-and-out electronic flutters and tangled radio signals from Raed Yassin, the drummer offloads his darbuka expertise. With Yassin flanging his raw material so that portions of undulating Arabic chanting and political discourse are stretched and splintered to create whooshing, non-verbal sounds, Zerang’s conga-like strokes give the presentation a rhythmic bottom.These blunt, thick but multiple percussion resonation also help move the airy, pinched timbres of Bechir Saadé’s nay out of the realm of snake-charming. Propelling tensile percussion strokes so that the resulting rigidity is released through multiphonics, the uneven altissimo pitch of Saadé’s wooden cylinder gets 21st Century resonance.
-- Ken Waxman
A Second Shadow
Christine Sehnaoui and friends at High Zero 2006