Éperdument by Abed Azrié

The story of a life carried by music and the love of poetry, by the singer, composer, Abed Azrié translated into Arabic

FAP publications is delighted to have supported composer Abed Azrié with the publication of his autobiographical book, Éperdument in Arabic by Dar Al-Nahda Al-Arabiya, one of the leading publishing houses in the Arab world. The project grew out of FAP’s close work with the artist and our commitment to bringing his writing, first composed in French, to an Arabic readership. Through Dar Al-Nahda’s distribution network, the book will now reach and be promoted among readers of Classical Arabic across the Arab world.

About the book

In these pages, the composer Abed Azrié takes us on a reflective journey that unfolds as an exploratory mosaic of memories, events and stories which trace the genesis of his devotional relationship with musical language.

He recounts the origins of his major musical projects while mapping a genealogy of mythological texts that stretch from Mesopotamia and far beyond, exploring the universal threads that connect us as human beings. The author’s philosophy of discovery comes alive in the music itself: a primordial source of inspiration, enchantment and knowledge that gives expression to the human heart in motion..

About the author

Abed Azrié is a French composer, born in Aleppo, Syria. He has published some twenty music albums, composed music for films and published several books, including his well-known adaptation of the "Gilgamesh epic" into French. On his tours throughout Europe, the United States and Mexico, he inspires his audiences with the modernity of his compositions and universality of his poetic messages. His music has long enjoyed the admiration of artists as diverse as Yehudi Menuhin, John Adams, Jeff Buckley, Leonard Cohen or René Char.

Abed Azrié sees himself primarily as a man of freedom. He believes in the arts as a medium of humanity and is defending an art that is free from entrenched forms and limitations and is aiming directly at man in his universality and timeliness. For him, « a word which is sung is no longer just a simple word, but it is enchanted, transformed into trance ».

The texts which he selects for his compositions are from oriental and western, ancient and contemporary poetry, and are written in different languages (Arabic, Spanish, French, Venetian, German and English): Adonis, Andrea Zanzotto, Omar Khayyam, Jean Cocteau, Gibran, Hafiz, Goethe, and others... All these texts have one thing in common: they are evoking the fullness of life and they celebrate the miracle of life, the freedom of the mind and the opening of the heart.

Serving these essential texts, Abed Azrié is writing a luminous, profound and refined music, which combines in ever renewed ways instruments, rhythms and voices, creating a universe of sound that only belongs to him. His music expresses an exceptional vitality inhabited by a subtle sense of the sacred without reference.