Likes: Sitting in cafes, world travel, touring new cities on foot, photography, languages, etymology
Dislikes: watching sports, wasting time
Favorite Food: all forms of pasta
Suad Bushnaq is a musically multilingual film and concert composer whose music has been hailed as ‘reflective and touching’ (BBC The Arts Hour), ‘rich and accessible’ (Klarafestival, Belgium), and ‘beautiful as the sadness of the night and the joy of the daybreak (Arab music legend Marcel Khalifeh, on her piece ‘The Road to Jenin’). The Road to Jenin has recently been nominated for a Hollywood Music in Media Award in the World Music category, and won a Silver Medal for Outstanding Achievement in Original Score at the Global Music Awards. Suad composed short and feature length film scores for a number of award-winning filmmakers. Her film scores have been heard during screenings at prestigious festivals including the Dubai, Seattle, Beverly Hills, Hot Docs, Rhode Island, and Edinburgh International Film Festivals to name a few, earning critical acclaim. Her concert music has been performed in Europe, Canada, the United States, and the Middle East, and is listened to internationally. It includes works for solo, ensemble, choir, orchestra, and electroacoustics. Her orchestral works include ‘The Borrowed Dress’, and ‘The Storyteller ‘Hakawaty’ Suite for Orchestra’. Her music has been performed by the Vermont Symphony Orchestra during its Holiday Pops concert tour of 2017 to sold-out shows, as well as by the Syrian Expat Philharmonic Orchestra at the Berlin Philharmonie, Konzerthaus Berlin, Malmö Live Konserthus, in addition to the BOZAR along with the National Orchestra of Belgium. It has also been performed by the Vergara Symphony Orchestra in the Basque Country (North of Spain), the University of North Carolina Charlotte Orchestra, the Arab National Orchestra, as well as by the Friedenauer Kammerensemble and the Orquesta Ritornello in Berlin. Suad is one of a handful of Arab women composers in the world and was recently selected as one of six composers in this year’s Slaight Music Residency at the Canadian Film Centre. She earned an entrance scholarship award from the world-renowned music composition program at Canada’s top music school, McGill University, where she completed a Bachelor in Music Composition (’09). She is a member of both the Screen Composers Guild of Canada and the Alliance for Women Film Composers, and completed four years of her music education at the Higher Institute of Music in Damascus, Syria. www.suadbushnaq.com