Who is Johnny Hachem and some of his music composer philosophy: Johnny Hachem is one of the most brilliant pianists in today’s time. He has performed at various international festivals, including ones held in Ukraine, Lebanon, Switzerland, England, Austria, Germany, France, Spain Poland, Romania, The Netherlands, South Korea, as well as the Arab countries, where he played his solo works. It wasn’t until later on when young Johnny discovered how much talent awaited him in the music industry. He is a music prodigy who started learning piano and composition at the Lebanese Higher Conservatory of Music. He earned his master’s degree there with distinction too! Discover more info at Johnny Hachem.

Some of your works are artistic storytelling of war drama, like “The Battle of Siddim” or biblical themes, like “The Fall of Jericho” or your award-winning “Jacob & Rachel, The Love Story” others are more of standalone pieces like “Dawn”. How do you choose your themes? Is there a constant composing process like Haydn had or you go with improvisations to hone your pieces? Johnny Hachem: My musical compositions often talk about specific events that happened in the past or about certain circumstances that I lived or I dream of living. But when I am playing my own compositions in a piano recital, I always like to have a space to improvise according to how I feel at the time. Improvisation is an essential part of composition. The great composer Rachmaninov did this at several concerts when he was performing his own compositions.

He also composed a very successful orchestral piece, ‘The Battle of Siddim’, now known as ‘The Valley of the Dead Sea.’ This composition has been chosen and performed by The Lebanese Philharmonic, Lebanon, Lublin Philharmonic, Koshalin Symphony & Torun Symphony orchestra in Poland in just one year. Oriental Piano Project is one of the most uniquely composed tunes he has worked on. For that, he chose a good number of old traditional songs from the Orient that had never been written for the piano before. The project became extremely successful as these arrangements were performed in more than 15 countries in the last 12 years and were greatly admired by the audience.

Johnny Hachem: If you ask any modern composer, the answer will be simple: because most people have untrained ears. But as for me, there is a different simple answer: most people doesn’t like the contemporary music and art at all. Even the majority of musicians don’t like it! You know, it’s great to have modernistic elements in music and art, but going to the extreme and producing only bizarre things under the title of “contemporary” that most of people can’t digest, is not something I can agree with!

Johnny has performed his compositions world-wide in countries including, Lebanon, Jordan, Bahrain, Egypt, Qatar, France, Switzerland, Germany, England, Spain, Poland, Belarus and Ukraine. His most notable work include his composition for the documentary film I Knocked on the Temple’s Door by Carmen Labaki, and also for composing “The Fourth Watch”, which was performed by the Lebanese Philharmonic Orchestra in December 2014 and “The Battle of Siddim” performed by the Lebanese Philharmonic Orchestra in May 2017 and by “Lublin Philharmonic orchestra”, Poland in October 2017.

Classical music these days more of a sub-niche with rigid frames and for many it is boring and full with repetitions. It is true, even Verdi became quite “pop” in some of his works, not to mention Chopin or Donizetti. Ok, maybe Bartok was a different league and an exception; however, there is a trend to “lighten up” the classical pieces to make it more acceptable for the masses. As a composer and performer, how do you see this, what are your experiences? Johnny HachemJohnny Hachem: I will divide my answer into two parts: First, I believe that people listen to classical music more than ever, but that is through movies and video games, however, most of them don’t like listening to it in a concert hall and that’s because of the strict etiquette rules there; you can’t clap between the movements of the musical piece even if you were very excited, you can’t cough now, you can’t move… in other words, you can’t express your emotions as you do in pop or rock concerts… To tell you the truth, it wasn’t like that before. Joseph Horowitz, in his wonderful new book, Moral Fire, describes audiences “screaming” and “standing on chairs” during classical concerts in the 1890s. The New York Times records an audience that “wept and shouted, strung banners across the orchestra pit over the heads of the audience and flapped unrestrainedly” when listening to their favorite opera singer at the Met in the 1920s. And the strict rules started in 1960.