Sharif Sehnaoui

Sharif Sehnaoui is a Lebanese guitarist and improviser born in Beirut in 1976. His work explores the acoustic and electric guitar through preparations, unconventional attacks and an emphasis on the intrinsic properties of strings and resonating surfaces rather than relying on electronic effects.

After developing his improvisational practice in Paris in the late 1990s, he returned to Beirut and helped establish its experimental-music community. With trumpeter Mazen Kerbaj, he founded the Irtijal festival, which became an important meeting point for improvised and new music in the Arab world. Creative Sources documents his guitar within an international network of freely improvising musicians.