Joelle Khoury

Born in Beirut (1963), Joelle Khoury left Lebanon for the United States after the beginning of the Lebanese civil war. She obtained a degree in Economics and Musicology at George Mason University, Virginia. Returning to Lebanon several years later, she got a Master's degree in philosophy at Saint Joseph University and a piano diploma from the Lebanese Higher Conservatory of Music. She has been invited on Extra-muros residencies in France (2002 and 2004), Czech Republic (2006),[4] Switzerland (2011, through Pro Helvetia) and the United-States (2013) as a MacDowell Colony fellow, where she worked on her multimedia performance Palais de femmes.

For almost two decades, she has composed contemporary classical music pieces and concertos for chamber and philharmonic orchestras, as well as pieces for her own jazz quintet. Her idea of composition, not restricted to specific standard styles, eras, geographical spaces or music categories stricto sensu, led her towards contemporary music within complex jazz forms and non-traditional classical music structures. Rather than “orientalizing” her music, – as a Lebanese composer – she always thought that “A true composition is the fruit of a unique idea, developed into a concept, based in what the composer has heard, aiming at expressing an individual point of view, a certain personality. Therefore it is neither “western” nor “oriental”, taking into account the fact that we have all heard numerous styles of music […]”.