SOLO
It’s Good To Die Every now And Then (2017-Al Maslakh)
In recent years he has performed a solo set of heavily processed bass generated sounds.
His debut solo album was released on Al Maslakh Records in 2017.
With this work, the artist displays his multiple influences from oriental tonalities to sophisticated electronic sounds, playing with texture, volume, dynamics and space. Elieh has developed a unique and personalized technique of playing the electric bass, using multiple preparations such as sticks, vibrating tools and electronic music pedals in order to expand the possibilities of his instrument, at times transforming it into a synthesizer or a drum machine. The resulting work is both visually and sonically stimulating.
SCRAMBLED EGGS
Tony Elieh/Charbel Haber/Malek Rizkallah/Fadi Tabbal
Former Member: Marc Codsi
Scrambled Eggs were one of the most prolific alternative rock groups in Lebanon. They released nine albums and EPs between 2002 and 2010, as well as two soundtracks for Lebanese filmmakers Joana Hadjithomas & Khalil Joreige. The band came together in Beirut in 1998, in a city still reeling from the damages of its civil war. Scrambled Eggs aligned its musical aesthetic with the grunge wave for a while, before settling on a looser, more experimental approach to music-making. In 2002 they entered the recording studio for the first time, delivering their first album in a span of two intensely creative days. Human Friendly Noises was characterized by a spacious, ambient rock mood, the work of a band still debating its influences, from British progressive rock to more aggressive strands of American indie rock. With second album No Special Date, Nor A Deity to Venerate, Scrambled Eggs finally hit their creative stride, embracing a new palette of sounds and birthing their own distinctive sound, a mesh of guitars and abstract noises, pushing to the extreme the search for harmony in chaos.
The band went through different combinations of musicians before settling in 2004 on its core line-up of Charbel Haber, Marc Codsi, Tony Elieh and Malek Rizkallah. 2004 also saw the creation of the band’s own label, "Those Kids Must Choke", and the release of a third studio album entitled Nevermind Where, Just Drive. This was by far the band’s most experimental effort yet, seamlessly blending elements of noise and free improvisation, and coincided with their first participation in Irtijal, Beirut’s renowned festival for experimental music, that same year. In 2005, Scrambled eggs contributed several tracks to the soundtrack of A Perfect Day, directed by Lebanese filmmakers Joanna Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige. The album went on to win the Best Soundtrack Award at Festival des Trois Continents in Nantes (France).
Happy Together Filthy Forever was recorded during Israel's devastating war on Lebanon in the summer of 2006, and finds the four musicians at their fiercest and most uncompromising, delivering a scorching selection of angry, punk nuggets. The record was the first collaboration between Scrambled Eggs and then-nascent Lebanese indie label Ruptured. The following year, the band recorded their second soundtrack for filmmakers Joreige & Hadjithomas, for the Catherine Deneuve-starring Je Veux Voir. The year 2008 was marred by the departure of guitarist Marc Codsi, seeking to focus on both his solo activities and electro-rock duo Lumi. His departure was followed by a short EP entitled Dedicated to Foes Celebrating Friends, released towards the end of 2008.
The trio of Haber, Elieh and Rizkallah joined forces with sound engineer and producer Fadi Tabbal from Tunefork Studios, who recorded their next three albums, and often appeared with the band on stage as second guitarist. The two albums released by experimental rock label Johnny Kafta’s Kids Menu, in 2010, were characterized by numerous collaborations, from electronic masterminds such as Joseph Ghosn and Abdallah Ko, to free-improv musicians Sharif Sehnaoui, Mazen Kerbaj and Stephane Rives. These would constitute a swansong of sorts for the band. In 2012, due in no small part to the remaining band members feeling the need to focus on their side projects, Scrambled Eggs went on definitive hiatus. Their influence on Lebanese indie rock, as well as the dazzling ease they displayed in various modes of “rock” music, is unprecedented to this day.
KARKHANA
Umut Caglat/Tony Elieh/Mazen Kerbaj/Maurice Louca/Sam Shalabi/Sharif Sehnaoui/Michael Zerang
Featuring some of the most innovative musicians from Beirut, Cairo, Istanbul and Chicago, Karkhana's seven multi- instrumentalists build a transcendental atmosphere, developing what could possibly be called "free Middle Eastern music".
They met in Beirut for the first time in February 2014 and recorded both live and in studio for Italian vinyl label Sagittarius and have released 6 albums to date.
Sharing a blend of free jazz and psychedelic with various shades and traces of shaabi, tarab and much more. Karkhana combines the talents of Umut Çağlar: flutes, reeds, percussion, Mazen Kerbaj: trumpet, mezmar Sam Shalabi: electric guitar, oud Sharif Sehnaoui: electric guitar Maurice Louca: synth, organ Tony Elieh: electric bass Michael Zerang: drums
aya Metwali & calamita
Tony Elieh: Electric Bass
Aya Metwali: Vocals
Malek Rizkallah: Drums
Sharif Sehnaoui: Electric Guitar
CALAMITA = KARKHANA members TONY ELIEH, SHARIF SEHNAOUI and Lebanese drummer MALEK RIZKALLAH join forces with the Egyptian singer AYA METWALLI - the result is the improbable meeting between free jazz / improv, punk rock & Oum Kalthoum!
CALAMITA is the “rock project” of SHARIF SEHNAOUI and TONY ELIEH, two of the most active musicians on the Lebanese experimental scene (among others projects, both are members of the “free Middle Eastern music” collective KARKHANA). SEHNAOUI comes from a jazz and improv music background, ELIEH is primarily a rock musician and founding member of the Lebanese post-punk band THE SCRAMBLED EGGS whose work in the last decade has covered many directions from pop-rock to plain experimental. They are joined by Lebanese drummer MALEK RIZKALLAH (WHO KILLED BRUCE LEE, ex THE SCRAMBLED EGGS). As trio they develop instrumental pieces that draw their inspiration from artists as diverse as Tony Conrad, Last Exit or Oum Kalthoum.
AYA METWALLI is an Egyptian singer/songwriter, composer and sound artist currently based in Beirut. Grown up in Cairo, her father would play non-stop Oum Kalthoum songs on road trips to the beach and Aya’s mother; known to have the most beautiful voice in the family, she always sang at home and at family gatherings, so long before Aya was able to form her own music taste, immense amounts of Arabic classic songs and melodies already settled in her subconsciousness …
After her first EP „Beitak“ in 2016, Metwalli (named “a musical enigma” by The Guardian) started to integrate more experimental and eerie sonic excursions into her avant-pop, so the collaboration with CALAMITA feels like a natural or logic step.
The roots for „Al Saher“ („stay awake“) were laid when SEHNAOUI and METWALLI first worked together in “Night”, a dance piece by ALI CHAHROUR which included a wide collection of Arabic songs and ancient poems, later Sehnaoui invited her to work with CALAMITA.
The four met in a recording studio in Beirut, using songs by "The Voice of Egypt" Oum Kalthoum as starting point. Together they aim to fully revisit the song format and explore the possibilities of classical Tarab songs, extracted from their origins and reframed within the music of the twenty-first century. The result is a mix of various styles and influences that often seek to stretch the contrasts to towering extremes - an improbable blend between free jazz & improv, punk rock & Oum Kalthoum!
Los Panteros
Tony Elieh: Electric Bass, Electronics
Aya Metwali: Vocals, Electronics
Tony Elieh with Aya Metwalli, Egyptian artist born in Cairo.This duo was initially created to perform at Irtijal Berlin 2020 and both artists found an opportunity to develop this project and expand upon the materials and unique style developed for this piece.Metwalli and Elieh had an intensive residency in Berlin in May 2022, they performed live and recorded new materials. This project was funded by the Musikfonds e.V. by means of the Federal Government Commisioner for Culture and Media (BKM), as part of the NEUSTART KULTUR recovery program
ZONE NULL
Tony Elieh - bass guitar, live-electronics
Burkhard Beins - bass guitar, live-electronics
The Berlin-based duo ZONE NULL unites Tony Elieh and Burkhard Beins for an unusal encounter of two bass guitars and a variety of analog and digital live-electronics. While for Elieh the bass guitar has always been a main focus of his musical activities, as an improviser and namely with the Lebanese indie rock band Scrambled Eggs, Beins only recently expanded his already wide range of extended percussion, experimental electronics and sound art by co-founding the Krautrock-Noise band Slurge as their bass player. The sonic fiction of ZONE NULL evolves and florishes on the broad musical horizon these two gentlemen have in common, ranging from musique concréte and contemporary composition via improvised and experimental music to electronic, post-punk and avantgarde rock.
SPIRIT WEATHER
Tony Buck: Percussions
Tony Elieh: Electric Bass, Electronics
Spirit Weather is an electric bass and drums duo, formed in May 2020, initially, to
present a performance for the opening of the Akademie der Kunste Berlin festival,
Memories in Music. The piece was to be an offering, a ritual, a joyful noise and celebration
in rhythm and sound. The duo set out to explore the merging of both eastern and
western musical models, drawing on shared experience and influences ranging from improvisation, rock, minimalism and noise.
This project was inspired as a means to develop further and expand upon the materials and unique style developed for this piece. Utilizing multiple influences from oriental tonalities to sophisticated electronic sounds, playing with texture, volume, dynamics and space, Spirit Weather wish to research and develop richer and more varied options within the group.
JOHNNY KAFTA ANTI-VEGETARIAN ORCHESTRA
Tony Elieh/Charbel Haber/Mazen Kerbaj/Malek Rizkallah/Sharif Sehnaoui/Raed Yassine
Initially a combination of two of Lebanon's most active and longest standing groups, JKAVO was founded when Scrambled Eggs (punk-rock band founded in 1998) & "A" Trio (free improv trio founded in 2002) joined forces and mixed styles to record "Beach Party at Mirna el-Chalouhi" in January 2009, combining each trio's distinctive sound to create something genuinely new, somewhere between punk and krautrock, free jazz and improvisation. Though self-released and self-distributed in a very special format on Al Maslakh sub-label Johnny Kafta’s Kids Menu, the CD received very positive feedback leading to several concerts in Lebanon under the band’s new identity.
On one occasion the band was joined by seminal American guitarist and composer Elliott Sharp, and in their European debut, they were augmented by Australian drummer Tony Buck.
In August 2012, the band finally recorded their new album, adding a strong element of composition to their usual improvisations, ranging from noisy ambient atmospheres to full energy free rock explosions. The four tracks on this album define the band’s new sound: more control that may allow more freedom.
CALAMITA
Tony Elieh/Sharif Sehnaoui/Davide Zolli
Calamita is a free-rock powerhouse trio composed of Lebanese musicians Sharif Sehnaoui and Tony Elieh (BAO, Electric Wormholes, Karkhana) and Italian musician Davide Zolli, from Italian psych rock collective Squadra Omega.
WORMHOLES ELECTRIC
Tony Elieh/Mazen Kerbaj/Sharif Sehnaoui
Wormholes started as an audio-visual project by Mazen Kerbaj and Sharif Sehnaoui. It is performed live and in total improvisation mode.
In 2008, Kerbaj came up with a new system he had developed, allowing him to draw live. It consisted of a glass table, with a wide array of ink, water, solvents, brushes and various unidentified objects.
The group expanded into an “electrified” version to include guitarists Charbel Haber and Tony Elieh.
Wormholes is an attempt to alter a specific segment within time and space, hoping to open a corridor between two artistic disciplines, allowing them to give each other meaning.
Within this setting, both sound and visual elements exist only during the timeframe of the performance.
OMARCHESTRA
Ousman Arabi/Umut Caglar/Tony Elieh/Charbel Haber/Maurice Louca/Sam Shalabi/Sharif Sehnaoui/Fadi Tabbal
Initiated by Charbel Haber, Orchestra Omar is now the very first guitar ensemble to emerge from the Middle East. Though the core of the ensemble is Lebanese, the line-up (7 guitar players + 1 electric bass) includes Egypt's Maurice Louca Sam Shalabi and Turkey's Umut Caglar Beirut Sharif Sehnaoui Osman Arabi Tony Elieh Fady Tabbal.
Their debut album, consists of three tracks loosely based on Omar Khorshid's music.
MOURTAFA3 1000
Tony Elieh/Ali Hout/Abed Kobeissi/Sharif Sehnaoui
Mourtafa3 1000 is a combination of two of Beirut’s most prolific musical couples: Abed Kobeissy & Ali Hout (Two or the Dragon, The Great Departed, Asil…) Sharif Sehnaoui & Tony Elieh (Karkhana, Calamita, Wormholes Electric). The four musicians had already worked together in various projects and the idea of a quartet soon became self-evident. It was finally launched in September 2019 during Mannheim’s Planet Ears Festival.
The band aims to explore how various musical genres and aesthetics can co-exist to form a unified field. They draw on a vast and eclectic array of backgrounds to create the plateaus that give life to the music: from traditional to rock, experimental to electronic, noise to free improvisation. Despite an attachment to their respective instruments, the quartet opens up its sonic spectrum by a heavy use of electronics, effects, samplers as well as extended techniques.
Percussion Duo
Tony Elieh/Sharif Sehnaoui
Sharif Sehnaoui and Tony Elieh are two of the most active musicians on the Lebanese experimental scene that revolves around “Irtijal”, a yearly international festival that has been held in Beirut for the last 20 years. Together they have developed several projects, including their unique Percussion Duo exclusively exploring percussion techniques on strings.
Cine-Concert
Elieh’s interdisciplinary projects are numerous. He has composed and performed music for cine-concerts and often collaborated with Metropolis Movie Theaters and Irtijal Festival as a homage to classic renowned silent movies with live improvised music.
Solitude
Feb 16 2018
The 48th Forum of this year's Berlin International Film Festival will open with a cine-concert titled Georges Méliès Solitudes, presented in collaboration with AFAC in the framework of the Arab European Creative Platform (AECP). The cine-concert includes screening of recently restored archival prints of short films by French film pioneer and illusionist Georges Méliès, accompanied by solo musical performances by Khyam Allami, Tony Elieh, Abed Kobeissy, Magda Mayas and Sharif Sehnaoui, respectively.
VARIETY
Oct 01 2019
Musical accompaniment by Sharif Sehnaoui, Tony Elieh, Malek Rizkallah, Youmna Saba and Mme Chandelier
Created in 2006, the Metropolis Art Cinema Association is a non-profit organization dedicated to promoting independent cinema in Lebanon and the MENA region through diverse programming, industry training, young audience outreach, and preservation of film heritage in order to allow for greater accessibility to alternative films locally and regionally.
Due to the ongoing budget cuts in the cultural sector in the country and worldwide, they find themselves threatened to close down their association and lose their cinema. They are launching a fundraising campaign and soliciting you to support them in this decisive moment in order to keep Metropolis alive so they can keep serving their community. Your support will allow Metropolis to survive this transitional period, keeping the association afloat until 2020, two years during which they aim to take the first steps towards becoming financially independent and owning their own venue.
Sursock Museum Esplanade – Ashrafieh, Beirut
La Chute de la Maison Usher
Dec 09 2012
THE DREAM MACHINE - Beirut Audio-Visual Festival #1
Ciné-concert, At Metropolis.
Jean Epstein's "La Chute de la Maison Usher" (1928)
Live music by Scrambled Eggs + Cynthia Zaven. Separately they have composed music for moviemakers such as Ghassan Salhab & Joanna Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige. They now join forces to revisit this classic adaption of an Edgar Allan Poe story.
The adventure of prince achmed
Nov 20 2008
The METROPOLIS Association,
In partnership with ZIAD NAWFAL,
Presents:
Lotte Reiniger's
THE ADVENTURES OF PRINCE ACHMED (1926)
A Cine-Concert by XEFM
On the occasion of the closing night of BEIRUT ANIMATED
The XEFM quartet consists of Charbel Haber on electric guitars, Tony Elieh on bass both hailing from rock band Scrambled Eggs, Fadi Tabbal on guitars and percussion from The Incompetents, and Abdallah KO on electronics.
Following the release of their self-titled album in 2008, XEFM performed at the Né à Beyrouth film festival in the summer of 2008. Their performance consisted of a live soundtrack to L'AMATEUR, a Lebanese short film from 1955.
In February 2009, XEFM created a new soundtrack for famed Russian art-house film MAN WITH A MOVIE CAMERA (1929), and performed it live in Beirut at The Basement.
THE ADVENTURES OF PRINCE ACHMED performance will see XEFM tackling the animation genre for the first time, and constitutes an all-time premiere in Lebanon.
Performances
He has also composed and performed live music for VARIOUS plays and dance performances which have toured internationally, such as Mother Tongue with the choreographer Pierre Geagea, Fugacious Presence with the Dutch Visual artist, filmmaker and documentary photographer Ilse Frech, The Diary of a Mulberry Tree with the international dancer Jean Paul Mehansio and screen play writer Nadine Abou Zaki.
Mother Tongue
Jul 18 2014
Conceived, choreographed and performed by Lebanese dancer Pierre Geagea, ‘Mother Tongue’ is a solo dance performance inspired by the gracefulness and expressiveness of sign language. ‘Mother Tongue’ traces the journey of a dancer as he gradually develops the capacity to partially hear. In doing so, the worlds of language, gesture, rhythm and understanding begin to collide. A collaboration with musicians Sharif Sehanoui (electric guitar) and Tony Elieh (bass guitar), the dance and live music score sketch Pierre’s unique relation to rhythm, music, words and signs – his very own mother tongue.
The diary of a mulberry tree
Sep 15 2018
About the performance:
Do trees have a memory? Do they have consciousness? Do they communicate with their environment? Can they hear, smell and feel? How do they respond emotionally to humans? Do they feel pain or experience joy or sadness? What is our responsibility as humans towards the nature and environment in today’s digital age?
Inspired by the bloody events of the Lebanese civil war and by Eastern philosophy, this performance is about a mulberry tree telling the story of its relation to its surroundings. The tree Pyramus unveils its secrets with the tree Thisbe and humans: it whispers its joys, fears and angers. Through its story, we will learn the deeply moving stories of the people who interacted with the tree and lived around it. The mulberry tree, central in the life of the characters, has borne witness to the most intimate details of their daily lives.
This performance is inspired by the lessons drawn from history and reflected through dance, poetry, narration, music, where art and nature blend harmoniously to create bodies telling the “Diary of a Mulberry Tree”.
CREDITS
Writer & director by: Nadine Abou Zaki | Choreographer & dancer: Jean-Paul Mehansio | Performers: Dana Mikhail & Rouaida al Ghali | Live music: Tony Elieh | Assistant director and costumes designer: Bshara Atallah | Lighting designer: Ahmad Hafez | Set execution : Bahaa Abou Zaki | Photo by Elie Harb | Co-production: Red Oak | The performance was originally created with the support of: Institut Français du Liban
Fugacious Presence
May 27 2016
A Collective Performance
Fugacious Presence is a live-poem in the form an audiovisual composition being written at the very moment. The performance explores the theme of war and memory related to Lebanon’s history and the carriers of its trauma - embodied by objects, the city as part of the landscape, and the human body as such. A vivid image of memory in transition emerges, yet awaiting to capture and grasp a voice or a body to be expressed in the present.
Performers: Daniel Balabane, Mirna Boyadjian, Tony Elieh, Rawad Kanj, Sarah Athina Nahas, Elizabeth Srour-Kanj
Movement Coach: Amelie Murdock
Wardrobe: Raya Kazoun
Movie soundtracks
Elieh, has recorded many acclaimed albums, and composed music for several movies including an award winning movie soundtrack for Perfect Day (Prix de la création sonore et de la musique originale-Festival des 3 Continents de Nantes 2005).
a perfect day
Directors: Khalil & Joanna Joreige
Music: Scrambled Eggs
Stuck in a traffic jam, Malek catches a fleeting glance of the beautiful Zeina the woman he loves. Tapping text messages into his mobile phone he desesperately tries to get through to her, but she no longer wants to see him. She vanishes into the throng of midday Beirut traffic.
The young man has a syndrome which interrupts his breathing during sleep. Whenever he stops moving, he dozes off adding to his disorientation. His mother Claudia has still not accepted his father’s disappearance after 15 years. She stays at home should her husband return, Malek drives around the city alone in his car.
Each of them trying to live with a void of lost love. But today may be the “perfect day” to lay their ghosts to rest. Malek is taking his hesitant mother to declare her husband officially dead in the “absence of a body”. And that evening, in a trendy nightclub where the young of Beirut go to dance and forget their troubles, Zeina looks ready to give Malek a second shot at the love he so yearns for.
je veux voir
Directors: Khalil & Joanna Joreige
Music: Scrambled Eggs
July 2006. A war breaks out in Lebanon. A new war, but not just one more war. A war that crushes the hopes of peace and the momentum of our generation.
We no longer know what to write, what stories to recount, what images to show. We ask ourselves: what can cinema do ?
That question, we decide to translate it into reality. We go to Beirut with an icon, an actress who, to us, symbolizes cinema, Catherine Deneuve. She will meet our preferred actor, Rabih Mroué.
Together, they will drive through the regions devastated by the conflict.
Through their presence, their meeting, we hope to find the beauty which our eyes no longer perceive.
It is the beginning of an unpredictable, unexpected adventure.
Crayons of Askalan
Initial release: 2011
Director: Laila Hotait Salas
Music composed by: Scrambled Eggs
Cast: Mohammad al Masri
Screenplay: Laila Hotait Salas, Tetra Balestri
Producers: Laila Hotait Salas, Federika Odriozola, Nadia Hotait Salas
Crayons of Askalan is a 2011 documentary film based on the story of Palestinian artist Zuhdi Al Adawi. In 1975, at the age of fifteen Zuhdi is imprisoned in the high security Israeli jail, Askalan. With the help of his fellow prisoners and their families, he keeps his spirit alive through artistic expression, smuggling in color crayons and smuggling out his artwork, with a pillowcase as his canvas. It was selected to compete at the 2012 HOT DOCS International Documentary Festival, the 2012 CPH Dox Festival and 2011 Doha Tribeca Film Festival,
A prelude - A letter to Eternity
Directed by Ilse Frech
Cinematography & Camera: Talal Khoury and Ilse Frech
Editing: Ilse Frech
Music: Tony Elieh and Sharif Sehnaoui
Production: Ilse Frech Visual Art, Film & Photography | FRECHFILMS
Year of production: 2016, footage filmed in Lebanon.
The trailer is a first study for a new film and filminstallation to be developed by Ilse Frech. The idea and research took shape during my artist-in-residence at Ashkal Alwan, from March 1st - June 1st 2016, in affiliation with the Mondriaan Fund, The Netherlands. A second cinematographic and narrative study, entailing further research, was held in Tunisia and Sicily, in June 2018. The film project is currently in its research phase for further development intended to start this forthcoming year.
a day in 59
Director: Nadim Tabet
Music: Tony Elieh/Charbel Haber/Sharif Sehnaoui
A day in 59, which deals with a very current topic for Lebanon even if history happens in 1959! This topic theme being neither more nor less than class struggle!
Le Liban en Automne
Director: Nadim Tabet
Music: Scrambled Eggs
Au Liban, un jeune réalisateur tourne un film aux images anodines. Au fur et a mesure qu’il avance dans le tournage, il se rend compte que derrière ces images se cache une réalité plus tragique…
In Lebanon, a young director making a film with benign images. As he grows in the shooting, he realizes that behind these images lies a more tragic reality.
