Bana Haffar

Bana Haffar is an electronic music composer interested in sequencing and the materiality of sound. She works with sample-based hardware and software musical sequencers, attempting to relate sound worlds and patterns to various non-musical systems. In Shed, a piece she composed for Third Coast Percussion Ensemble in 2020 for the Black Mountain College Museum, she began investigating the materiality of sound through the research and study of weaving. She developed a way to translate weaving drafts into rhythmic notation by transposing and programming them into a voltage controlled sequencer and created an accompanying graphic score. This pattern-based cross over continues to inform her work.

A lifelong expatriate, she was born in Saudi Arabia in 1987 and spent much of her childhood in the GCC. She began her musical career as a session bass player later switching to modular synthesizers. Immersed in the electronic music underground of Los Angeles, she together with Eric Cheslak founded Modular on the Spot in 2014, a monthly generator series on the banks of LA river. A true believer in the potential of artist-led spaces of all forms, in 2021 she co-founded the Beirut Synthesizer center in Lebanon – an informal co-op that provides access to electronic instruments, resources, and community. Her most recent solo works “Genera” and “Intimaa’” are released on Touch (UK).

banahaffar.com

Bana Haffar, Shed (graphic score), 2020