Long form Biography
Click here for a short form Biography
The music of Mohammed Fairouz straddles multiple worlds from the Sanskrit invocations of the Bagavad Gita, to the Latin Mass and Arabic music,
minimalism, indie rock, romantic tonality, jazz, thorny modernism, musical theater, the avant-garde and other idioms. By his early teens, Fairouz had
traveled across five continents and avidly immersed himself in the musical life of his surroundings, learning to play the didgeridoo in Australia, the
oud in Lebanon and attending seminars at the Acadmie Nationale de la Musique in Paris. His early musical training was in composition and piano with
teachers at the Royal Academy of Music and Royal College of Music in London. Throughout his childhood and teens, Fairouz had developed and
nurtured a passion for improvisation which culminated in a series of improvisatory concerts that he delivered throughout the Middle East during the
2003 invasion of Iraq.
Among his formative musical experiences that had a lasting effect on him, one of the most pronounced was a series of master classes with Sir
Thomas Allen which impacted Fairouz’s outlook on the voice and vocal music. He later presented Allen with his setting of a poem by Oscar Wilde.
That was the first song in Fairouz’s love affair with the voice that has, to date, produced an opera, eight song cycles and tens of art songs.
Fairouz’s substantial body of work in every genre including opera, song cycles for Soprano, Mezzo Soprano, Tenor and Baritone; symphonic and
choral works, piano music and electronic music in addition to chamber music for winds, percussion, strings and numerous other instrumental and
vocal combinations, has been extensively performed throughout the United States, Europe, the Middle East and Australia in venues such as New
York’s Carnegie Hall, Boston’s Symphony Hall and the New England Conservatory’s Jordan Hall. His music has been featured at the Bienalle di
Venezia, the Kennedy Center's Festival of Contemporary Music, the New England Conservatory's Composers’s Series, Massachusetts College of Art
and Design’s Eventsworks Festival, the Boston Conservatory’s New Music Week and other festivals.
Among the performers of his work are the Borromeo String Quartet who have championed his Lamentation and Satire and are recording it for the
GM label, the Mimesis Ensemble, the Ibis Camerata, the Second Instrumental Unit, Counter)induction, the New England Conservatory Contemporary
Ensemble, Freisinger Chamber Orchestra, the conductors Gunther Schuller, John Page, David Hoose, Malcolm Peyton, Yoichi Udagawa and others.
His music is the subject of multiple essays including David Gutkin’s Putting on Airs and Joan Pamies’ probing exploration of the Bonsai Journal and
Airs in his portrait of outstanding young composers currently working in America which is published in the prominent Spanish musical journal
Sonograma.
Fairouz’s song cycle, Bonsai Journal is a feature piece on the Ibis Camerata’s CD "Boston Diary" Albany Records. His song cycles and art songs
have been performed hundreds of times, being featured on recital programs across the United States.
As a cultural ambassador, Fairouz is currently working with Musicians for Harmony to fulfill a commission for a large chamber work promoting
dialogue between Arabic and Jewish musical traditions and cultural trends. A similar project, being conceptualized by Joshua Jacobson and the Zamir
Chorale of Boston involves the commission of a large scale oratorio setting the poetry of modern Arab poets such as Mahmoud Darwish and Fadwa
Tuqan with Yehuda Amichai and other Israeli counterparts as well as drawing on the sacred and secular texts of the Jewish, Christian and Islamic
Middle East to weave together a narrative drama that seeks to illuminate the counterpoint between the poetics, musics, languages and peoples in
the region.
Fairouz has extensively set the works of Arab poets including Mahmoud Darwish in his Tahwidah, written to fulfill a commission from Alwan for the
Arts, a Manhattan-based Arab arts organization as well as lines from the Hebrew Kaddish in his Elegy for David Diamond.
Among the awards that Fairouz has received for his work are the Tourjee alumni award, the Malcolm Morse Memorial Award, the NEC Honors Award,
the New England Conservatory Contemporary Ensemble Prize and awards from the Merit Funds of the New England and Boston Conservatories. In
2008, he was honored with a national citation from the embassy of the United Arab Emirates in Washington D.C. for outstanding achievement in
artistry and scholarship.
As an educator, Fairouz has been invited to lecture across the country at institutions such as Chestnut Hill College in Philadelphia, University of
Western Michigan and Boston Conservatory’s Liberal Arts Department speaking on topics that range from post-colonial critical theory to Mahler's
Sixth Symphony to Al-Kindi and the Arab golden’s contribution to European music of the renaissance.
Fairouz’s teachers in composition have included John Heiss, Malcolm Peyton, Gunther Schuller and Halim El-Dabh.
Recordings on the Albany and GM labels.
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