Christine Abdelnour

Born in 1978, Christine lives in France but is of Lebanese origin. After discovering improvised music she began a process of self-taught study and sound experimentation using the alto saxophone. She has developed a unique personal language, producing sounds that are close to those of electroacoustic music but on a purely acoustic instrument. She approaches sound as a malleable material, rich in concrete textures which combine breath, silence and countless acoustic distortions. She has developed extended techniques and complex patterns of sound production, exploring the microtonal aspects of the saxophone and its high-pitched tones. She employs subtle tonguing techniques, unpitched breaths, spittle-flecked growls, biting, slicing notes and breathy echoing sounds from the bell of her horn.

Andy Moor

Andy Moor began his musical career in Edinburgh, Scotland playing guitar with the Dog Faced Hermans. He moved to the Netherlands to join the internationally acclaimed agit-prop post-punk group The Ex with whom he has remained a member for over thirty years. More recently Andy has collaborated with Cypriot composer, Yannis Kyriakides; French sound poet, Anne James Chaton and Lebanese saxophonist, Christine Abdelnour and has also worked composing soundtracks with Iranian filmmaker Bani Khoshnoudi.

Eleven years ago Christine and I organised a recording session in Vandoeuvre during the Musique Action Festival. We were invited by the late Dominique Repecaud to perform ‘live’ and he kindly offered us a space in the building to record. At the time Christine and I had hardly played together and we spent a couple of days in a small rehearsal studio somewhere in the building of CCAM recording our improvisations. We felt there were a handful of pieces that really stood out but not enough to release as a CD just then, so we shelved the project, waiting for an opportunity to record again in the near future. That future took 10 years to materialise as both of us became very busy with our newly arrived families and other music projects that took up most of our time. We ended up not playing together for many years, until we finally reunited in Rotterdam for a duo in 2019 during the Ex Festival. In September 2021 we managed to organise a second recording session after a concert in Instants Chavirés in Montreuil in our friend Bani’s house.  (Andy Moor)