http://www.nowtoronto.com/music/discs.cfm?content=170317

http://hour.ca/music/lallaland.aspx?iIDArticle=14537

May 1st, 2008
Lalla Land

Vienna-tronic
Steve Lalla

Baroquetechtician John Kameel Farah runnin' his harpsichord, piano, laptop and synth rig

Whether it was Mozart's introduction of Baroque influences into his treatment of then-current genres of classical music, Brian Wilson's fusing of trendy surf music with Phil Spector's "wall of sound" studio techniques or Steely Dan's heavenly marriage of jazz and '70s-era rock'n'roll, great moments in musical history often result from novel combinations of existing styles.
Lalla Land today takes a look at two visiting artists who find themselves between genres, combining their own rich musical perspectives on contemporary genres such as breakbeat, in the case of Vancouver's Myagi, or for Toronto keyboard whiz John Kameel Farah, with IDM and breakcore.

ooo
"There are always going to be some who resist when exposed to something they're not used to," tells Kameel Farah, "but it always evokes a strong response. Using beats may be perceived as lowbrow by some conservative musicians, but I don't care about the tools - you can use anything as material to arouse emotion through music."

Farah says he's been quite blessed with interest from classical composers, accomplished musicians and various electronic producers on the path that he's taken. "More are prepared to 'go there' than you'd think. And it's inevitable that these worlds come together. But really I don't have much of a choice in how I create. I have to satisfy the pianist, improviser, composer and producer within myself, and reassembling those worlds into these 'electro-piano concertos' is my way of integrating

them into a cohesive, meaningful experience."

"Believe it or not," Kameel Farah points out somewhat reluctantly, "I actually think the criticisms come less from the classical or jazz world but more from the indie scene, where sometimes a high level of skill on your instrument is held against you."

John Kameel Farah brings his stunning sonic, compositional and manual dexterity to a Saturday, May 3, show at McAuslan Brewery's St-Ambroise Centre alongside "trippy turntable duo" InsideAmind and breakcore/dubstep/yachtstep/Intelligent Tiki Music/drill'n'bass malcontent Blake Market (9 p.m. at 5080 St-Ambroise St.).

http://www.exclaim.ca/articles/multiarticlesub.aspx?csid1=117&csid2=874&fid1=28909

David Dacks writes in depth about John Farah's instrumentation in the "WHAT I PLAY" section of EXCLAIM! Magazine
"...John Kameel Farah isn't a "lapsed" classicist; he keeps building on everything that came before... he has found numerous ways to incorporate his education into bold and uncategorisable musical activity... Any investigation of what Farah plays quickly raises questions about how he plays and in essence, how he thinks...."

What I Play
John Kameel Farah
By David Dacks

Many classically trained musicians get to a point in their academic work where their musical tastes have far outstripped their desire to stick with the European canon. John Kameel Farah isn't a "lapsed" classicist; he keeps building on everything that came before. He won two Glenn Gould awards for composition while studying at the University of Toronto, then proceeded to further investigate the work of noted boundary breakers such as Arnold Schoenberg and Karlheinz Stockhausen. Ever since, he has found numerous ways to incorporate his education into bold and uncategorisable musical activity that includes elements of renaissance and baroque music, free improvisation, Middle Eastern textures, ambient minimalism, techno, dubstep and electro-acoustics. He is as comfortable at the Om Festival as he is in a concert hall. His first solo release Creation (2006), was a DVD composed of all these various influences as a soundtrack to astrophysicist John Dubinski's computer animation of galactic formation, which earned him suitably diverse media attention. Any investigation of what Farah plays quickly raises questions about how he plays and in essence, how he thinks.

Farah's world is keyboards — from early renaissance instruments to the alphanumeric variety. His arsenal is composed of piano, synthesiser, Fender Rhodes, Hohner Pianet, several different flavours of harpsichord and a laptop, with each keyboard having different possibilities for self-expression. Farah describes each of his instruments as either pianistic or colouristic. "With keyboard instruments, you express yourself with notes. You're not using it as a sound sculpture, ideas are conceived of in a more traditional way, with classical development, structural development, and melodic ideas that are made up of notes, even if it's clusters. Suddenly with a synth, you start with a note and all of the sudden the parameters for changing it are radically different. On the synth, suddenly you are a wizard with sound and the environment changes right in front of you."

The relationship of pianistic and colouristic sounds extends to his musical choices with these instruments. "The more expressiveness that an instrument is capable of — like a grand piano — is ideal. The synth is completely colouristic. The harpsichord is more pianistic; if I'm playing something with beats, it doesn't compete very well. I have my bass keyboard, which is my most pianistic one, and I don't improvise on the synth like a keyboard, I use it completely for sound sculpture."

Sometimes sound design wades into classical forms. Because Middle Eastern scales and modes are part of his musical vocabulary, he has had to find a way to play melodically while accommodating its unique demands. One very specific keyboard is his choice for expression along these lines: "Korg is the only universal synthesiser. They have a parameter across all their synthesisers to detune their keyboard to Eastern scales. Even Nord doesn't do that. So Korgs have cheesy presets, but for me this huge thing of being able to play quartertones. Therefore, I can't [perform in this way] unless I specifically rent a Korg. I have my own style of playing on an equal temperament keyboard, which accesses the same frame of reference of ornamental, oriental notes. But it's more atonal. I can play asymmetrical scales that have a hazy balance of tonality and atonality."

Farah expresses both fascination and frustration with his computer, because it opens up worlds of possibilities while presenting a new set of technical and mental challenges. He sees his computer as a compositional tool and an accompanist, but not as an all-in-one improvising and recording device. There are philosophical and practical reasons behind this. "Beat sequences are always pre-sequenced, because my computer is so archaic it could give out at any moment. Also for compositional reasons, it would take too much of my processing power in my own brain [to manipulate beats live]… The live electronic processing I leave to my synth board. I'm a very hands-on person: clicking is not an active process, it's not dynamic, it's also not as expressive for me. So I'm not a laptop wizard." Premeditated laptop work and beat construction represent a different source of pleasure than playing a physical instrument. "It's not providing you the same pleasure as if it were an instant connection to your instrument, but that's not a downside. I do enjoy it but it's not the same as the high as you get from improvising at the piano at five in the morning."

Farah thinks in terms of structures in whatever he does — even the outer margins of free improvising or breakcore can be part of a greater overall structure. "Everything is in a galactic symphonic context… What [I'm] doing is essentially creating a piece of musique concrete. Let's say somebody's performing a piece for marimba and tape, he has his graphic score of the tape part that goes all over the place, he interacts with the recording going on, he phases himself out in certain spots and it just grows organically from that. I conceive of it that way."

Nov 2, 2007 Music Gallery concert now posted on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's website "Concerts on Demand" for your listening pleasure.

The 50-minute performance of "UNFOLDING" (for piano, harpsichord, synth, computer) was recorded and broadcast by The Signal, and now the recording, program notes and photos from the show are posted here online.

here's the link:
http://www.cbc.ca/radio2/singleConcert.html?20071212farah

FARAH IN KEY - Fateema Sayani

Toronto piano guy John Kameel Farah counts himself lucky to have been reviewed by the Toronto Star's classical critic one day, played an avant-garde jazz fest the next, then an underground electronica event a few days later.
Those diverse interests converge on his debut CD, Creation, which is heavy on experimentation while still having a palpable pop bent. When attached to Farah, the word "experimentation" isn't synonymous with atonal drones. A childhood
piano master, he moves from classical piano to Middle Eastern textures to trip hop. The fusing is relatively seamless on disc. So just how does he translate the aural goulash on stage?
"It's halfway between a formal concert experience and an underground drum 'n' bass DJ set," he says.
Farah -- a one-man beat-slinging post-orchestra -- will lug a Fender Rhodes electric piano, synthesizer, laptop and harpsichord to town for his first Ottawa show, playing two sets.
"Each set is like a giant composition," he says. "The structure is really large with lots of mini-structures inside it. It appeals to people's imaginations: they don't have to understand what's going on theoretically, they just enjoy this big trip."
John Kameel Farah plays the Avant-Garde Bar, 135 1/2 Besserer St., tonight at 9:30, $8.


http://www.canada.com/ottawacitizen/columnists/story.html?id=257a87a5-8e81-461a-851b-d831f2e5ae67

"Creation" John Kameel Farah
http://www.thewholenote.com/wholenote/index.html
[click on Discoveries (CD Reviews) then click on Modern & Contemporary]

by Andrew Timar, Wholenote Magazine

Classically trained pianist and composer, Toronto-based Farah's CD "Creation" is an extraordinary self-produced musical journey which literally merges music from the 16th century to today's techno dance floors. It is all performed with style and assuredness by the composer on acoustic piano, harpsichord and various synthesizers and samplers.

Above all, it is evident that here we have the sure hand of a composer with something to say. Farah's command of his instruments and aesthetic direction allows him to superimpose Renaissance European dance music on top of current synthesized dance beats (or perhaps the other way around), while evoking 1950-70s electronic analogue synth sounds, all mediated by minimalist patterns of the Reich kind. At other moments, such as on the luteniste, de-tuned synth keyboard melodies cleverly elicit a Middle Eastern sound world.

The sequence of the individual pieces is satisfyingly modulated and reminds this listener of the younger John Oswald's sense of adventurous musical form.

According to those who know the dance music scene better than I (a sad admission since one of my sons is a Hiphop DJ), the ordering of pieces on this CD is similar to a dance DJ set and replicates Farah's live concerts. Short interludes played on honestly-recorded acoustic piano and harpsichord add to the sense of a sonic grand tour - taking place over time and world geography - which emerges over the duration of "Creation".

John Kameel Farah's first CD is an auspicious and confident genre-busting and ear-opening mix. I for one eagerly await the next leg of his musical journey.

Sept, 2007

http://www.montrealmirror.com/2007/072607/music5.html

Scalar tailor:
>>> The music of Toronto's John Kameel Farah reaches far and wide

by RUPERT BOTTENBERG

"After silence," the writer Aldous Huxley famously remarked, "that which comes closest to expressing the inexpressible is music." That space between the concrete and the utterly abstract is one that Toronto-based musician and artist John Kameel Farah has, perhaps quixotically, challenged himself to chart.

His work—for instance, the material on his debut CD Creation—speaks of the ancient past and unperceivable future, the micro and the macro, antibodies and heavenly bodies and astral bodies. "It's so many things connecting to each other," Farah explains, "like a gigantic Venn diagram, but 3D somehow, where everything is somehow still, in an optical illusion, containing each other."

The same can be said of the actual sonic components of Farah's music, which is grounded in his extensive classical training (he won the Glenn Gould Composition Scholarship twice, and later studies with Terry Riley) yet informed by Middle Eastern ideas, the improvisation of jazz, the hypermodernism of electronica and the possibilities of avant-garde experimentalism. If your eyes are glazing over, know this—it's also highly accessible and unpretentious, and unlikely yet inspired collaborations are par for the course (a gifted visual artist himself, Farah has recently worked extensively with photographer Eamon MacMahon, whose visuals will accompany Farah's performance, shared with Sam Shalabi, this weekend). His mission, it would seem, is seeking out engaging new ground as his academically venerated resources gradually petrify.

"The more I read history, the more I realize that every new civilization or empire or movement that comes about, from the beginning of recorded history, is always fresh and breaks with the old patterns. Of course, then it becomes stale and rigid, and unable to adapt, and assumes the same superstructure of what came before it. There's a period of quivering freshness that's there for a while, and then it's hijacked or becomes solely, paranoidly jealous of maintaining its power, and there ceases to be any movement forward.

"That's what happens in music, and this is coming from someone who revels in 16th-century keyboard music, but I try to look for what was moving forward in it. At the same time, I'm not out to just do something new, because that's the Achilles heel of modern classical music. It's become obsessed with newness for its own sake, rather than doing something that really achieves a different state of mind."

Often tailoring his performances quite specifically, Farah has been opening minds all over, from the Om Festival out in the woods to the Edward Said National Conservatory in Ramallah, from tiny hipster cafés to the Great Pyramid in Cholula, Mexico. The latter was a collaboration with astronomer John Dubinski, for whose gobsmacking galactic imagery Farah created an equally awe-inspiring score (go to www.galaxydynamics.org to take a gander).

"I think of my music more in the context of civilization, rather than just purely music. I always try to look to the largest scale that my brain, my capacity, can comprehend. I mean, I would even look at the parameters of galaxies as limiting, because that's the largest physical and time context that we can think of. But the emotional is an infinite dimension to go into, and that's the whole purpose of music, for me. Even if you're doing something intellectually, it's to affect you, in the end, emotionally."

"Toronto composer/keyboardist John Kameel Farah crosses genres and breaks down traditional boundaries with this electronic-inspired invention. He plans and improvises in equal measure. He interweaves acoustic and synthetic.

He is equally comfortable on the dance floors of the 16th and 21st centuries. Here, in 21 seamless tracks, Farah takes us on an entrancing, beat-loop-powered tour of our interior cultural-musical psyche. My two favourite tracks (the nine-minute "Fantasie and Toccata") introduce the music of William Byrd to the synthesizer and sequencer. Long live the mash-up."

-John Terauds, TORONTO STAR, July 27, 2006, (3.5/4 stars)

JOHN KAMEEL FARAH Creation (independent) Rating: NNNN

"Ideally, all musicians' influences would be as diverse as the sonic world John Kameel Farah inhabits. It can be tough trying to combine your various loves into a sound that actually makes sense, and most artists choose to focus on one style at a time. When someone actually combines the elements of their musical history without making them sound like a bunch of empty references, the results are genuinely exciting. A skilled classically trained piano player, Farah also dabbles in modern improvised music, as well as dance and experimental electronic music. This isn't the type of crossover stuff that's going to be rocking dance floors any time soon, but he links his various ideas and tangents in many ways like a DJ set, with interludes joining the tracks and a real sense of a journey emerging over the album's length."

-Benjamin Boles, NOW Magazine, Toronto, Sept. 21, 2006

"If your word of the day calendar gave you polymath today, it might also include a photo, or even better, an mp3 file from John Kameel Farah. Like a musical super virus, the definition resistant Farah can't be contained. He bursts into many of Toronto's bubble-like music communities, drawing from baroque, jazz, hip hop, classical, drum&bass and Arabic practices and merging them all into a very personal web of unlikely connections. Avant-garde? Yes. Hoity-toity? No. And if you check out Sunday's concert with TASA, you'll also see what happens when his creativity spills over into visual art."

-Tori Allen, CBC Metro Morning: What's Goin' On This Week, Jan 26, 2007