LOG BOOK

François Sarhan & Zafraan Ensemble

30.11.2025 16.30 & 18.00
KUBE [performance] | Dirch Passers Allé 8A

François Sarhan and Zafraan Ensemble present LOG BOOK, an event that combines the card game and concert formats. The composer François Sarhan has been keeping a sound diary since 2019. Not in the sense of an intimate journal, but a logbook, like that of a captain who notes down the events of the day.

The material is either voices - his own or those of other people -, his surroundings, conversations, radio snippets, stolen fragments of conversations, field recordings, jingles, personal compositions, weather forecasts, graphic scores, transcriptions of famous songs or other things. Sarhan is interested in the forgotten, the very small, and - following Georges Perec - the unusual. Through these micro-events, we try to make sense of the situation in which we currently find ourselves; the collective memory is mixed with the individual memory of the spectator.

To accompany this musical collection, François Sarhan has designed 80 motif cards that form the basis of the card game. The ensemble performs the musical diary entries and the audience debates various connections between the cards and the music before ultimately selecting the card that they think best represents the performed entry. In doing so, they act out a dynamic game of listening, meaning making, and persuasion.


Program:
François Sarhan LOG BOOK (2019-current)

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Zafraan Ensemble

stands for music that reflects today’s life, today’s society and today’s reality in all its facets. In interaction with other art forms, Zafraan observes, explores and processes what surrounds us: the people, the events, nature, the technologies, the normalities and the absurdities of today. The group, which consists of ten permanent members from Spain, France, New Zealand, Australia and Germany, was formed in Berlin in 2009 and plays current repertoire that is covered by the core line-up. A trademark of the ensemble are dramaturgically cleverly designed programs, but also staged concerts or immersive formats in which there is a connection with art movements such as theater, performance, installation and dance.

François Sarhan

studied cello at the Conservatoire National de Région de Boulogne-Billancourt, music theory and music aesthetics at the Conservatoire de Paris, poetics at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales and took part in courses at IRCAM. His works include operas, chamber music and solo works. With the international music theater collective CRwTH (named after the Welsh stringed instrument Crwth), founded in 2000, Sarhan has worked as a composer, director and performer on performances of his own and others' works, including spoken theater, dance and new media. In 2024 he was appointed composition teacher in the Anton Bruckner Private University, in Linz, Austria.

Credits:
Liam Mallett (flute)
Martin Smith (cello)
Clemens Hund-Göschel (keyboard)
Daniel Eichholz (percussion)
Jakob Krupp (double bass & electric bass)
François Sarhan (composition and speaker)
Emil Vijgen (moderator)

NOTE: Due to limited capacity there will be two performances. Please reserve a spot and be at the venue 10 minutes before the performance. If both performances are full, a small amount of spots will be kept for the door and additional seats will be released if some people don’t show up. Link to reserve seats