About
Bechara El-Khoury was born in 1957 in Beirut where he started comprehensive music studies while still pursuing his general advanced studies. Appointed choirmaster of the church of Saint Elias of Antelias, near Beirut, in 1973, this Franco-Lebanese composer and poet left Lebanon in 1979 to settle definitively in Paris, where he continued to study the craft of composition with Pierre-Petit. His catalogue includes more than seventy works performed by the finest orchestras in France and abroad, such as the London Symphony Orchestra, the Orchestre National de France and the Moscow Philharmonic Orchestra, in the most prestigious halls: Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, Salle Pleyel and Radio France in Paris, the Barbican Hall in London. The war in Lebanon inspired him in 1985 to compose a symphony, Les Ruines de Beyrouth op. 37. The winner of the Arts and Culture Prize awarded in 1994 by the L.B.C.I., the premier television channel in Lebanon, Bechara El-Khoury received in 2000 the Prix Rossini from the Académie des Beaux-Arts (Institut de France) and was appointed Chevalier of the National Order of the Cedar of Lebanon in 2001. In 2003, with his work Les Fleuves engloutis op. 64, he was a finalist in the international competition for orchestral composition, the ‘Masterprize’ in London.