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At the heart of the Smar Jbeil citadel amid the majestic mountains of Batroun, Khaled Mouzanar’s innovative idea was born: De vin et de musique (Of Wine and Music). For the second consecutive year and under Mouzanar’s artistic direction, a splendid concert will take place as part of an exceptional festival on 28, 29, and 30 July 2023. It’s a trio tango “for the love of wine, land, and music.”
Tango Seasons is a symphonic fusion between Vivaldi’s violin and Piazzolla’s bandoneon. In Smar Jbeil, after relishing Batroun’s wines, the audience will be swept away by the internationally renowned baroque group Gabetta Consort, under the guidance of violinist Andrés Gabetta and bandoneonist Mario Stefano Pietrodarchi. An experience best described as an emotional whirlwind blending taste and hearing. The sun will set to The Fifth Season, a composition by Khaled Mouzanar with captivating notes that will resonate for the first time, as a world premiere, against a backdrop of culture and hope.
Last summer, Mouzanar pioneered a first edition of wine and music: De vin et de musique (Of Wine and Music). It was intended as a chant of resistance, a cultural anthem to the mountains. Nestled amid the natural splendors of Batroun, the music echoed the dreams of a people hungry for life, in a poetic juxtaposition with the tenacity of the mountains. Intoxicating notes soaring towards the smiling skies overwhelmed with gratitude. This blissful experience is to be replicated this year with the same artistic and patriotic fervor.
Having lived in the Batroun region for several years, Khaled Mouzanar and his family are in perfect harmony with nature, the farm, and the land. “I am experiencing something very beautiful here that I wanted to share with everyone. And I wanted to mix it with music. I wanted to connect this agrarian life with my life as a musician, an artist, and a winemaker,” he says. “From this beautiful place, which is just five minutes from where I live, the idea for the festival was born. I’d stroll in this citadel alone, dreaming of setting up a project here.”
This concert was also born out of the friendly encounter between Andrés Gabetta and Mario Stefano Pietrodarchi. Andrés has Argentinian origins, lives in Switzerland, and has a keen sensitivity for tango. Both artists had the idea of playing Vivaldi’s and Piazzolla’s Four Seasons by introducing the bandoneon into Vivaldi’s Four Seasons and Andrés’ baroque violin into Piazzolla’s Four Seasons. “It’s an extraordinary blend,” says Mouzanar. “They have been touring with this concert for the last four years, and it is our pleasure to host them here. At the end of each concert, virtually everywhere in the world, they perform a piece that I composed. It is a great privilege.” He adds, “For this concert, I wanted to compose something new, The Fifth Season. It’s a somewhat apocalyptic season, a season where there are no seasons, and we will thus conclude the concert with this fifth season which we will present for the first time.”
Speaking of his sensitivity to tango, Mouzanar explains, “It’s definitely audible and perceptible in my music. It’s due to my strong affinity to South American music, inherited from my mother who spent her entire childhood in South America, and my love for Piazzolla, which was a significant discovery at the age of 17 through my music teacher. For me, it was a monumental musical, harmonic, and artistic revelation that has influenced my creations. I use the harmonic techniques and sonorities of tango in my music. It’s the intent, or sometimes the tango violence and sensuality that interests me more than the rhythm of tango itself.”
As for his inspiration for writing The Fifth Season, Khaled Mouzanar testifies, “We have all been, for the past three years – and I for even longer – immersed in this atmosphere of end times, of civilizational, ecological, economic, cultural, spiritual collapse. When I wanted to write my version of the four seasons, it was obvious for me to question where they had gone. We are experiencing climate change and we are transitioning into a new Ice Age: ecological, climatic. Human activity certainly contributes to it all. This piece is one of awakening, of awareness, but it’s not a pessimistic work. Even though I consider pessimism as lucidity… I still have this childlike optimism in me. I can’t afford to be pessimistic. The piece consists of three movements. The first movement is where we enter a quasi-nuclear era. We wonder what is happening. Everything is disrupted. Everything is traumatic. The second movement is crazier. Nature becomes completely insane. During the third movement, man finds himself facing nature alone. In the end, there’s a kind of dialogue between them, a reconciliation. It ends on a somewhat positive note. This work is similar to my creations of the last three years, which fall under post-apocalyptic artistic literature.”
Mouzanar believes that the most beautiful things in life come to us by accident. “The piano, sometimes the fingers alone embark on something. Even when we hum a melody, it’s an idea of a tune or text that comes to us like a revelation. It’s after that we work on them. Inspiration is mysterious and it must be grasped immediately because it doesn’t come twice in a row.”
Deeply attached to Lebanon, the artist pays tribute to The Inspired Mountain by Charles Corm. “Today, it’s one of the places on Earth where it’s interesting to live,” he says, “because this impending collapse -because there is a collapse, the history of humanity is made of civilizations that collapse. It’s not extraordinary. It’s the normal course of things. Civilizations are born, they grow, and then they collapse. Then something revives. Today, we are in a pivotal era. In Lebanon, we are starting to feel this before others and in a more amplified, stronger, larger, more violent way. There are people who are going to live elsewhere, sheltered from the violence of this cataclysm. A collapsing civilization is cataclysmic because the collapse happens at all levels: economic, spiritual, ecological, intellectual…”
“It turns out to be interesting both intellectually and artistically,” Mouzanar concludes, “because the art that emerges from this happening is anticipatory. Our children will also be prepared for this. In the future, they will have the right reflexes and the right weapons to survive.”
Sunset drinks at 7 PM
Concert at 8 PM
Wine tasting and gourmet bites after the concert
Dates: July 28-29-30, 2023
Reservations: @ticketingboxoffice
