Get to know Johnny Hachem and some of his music composer thoughts: Johnny Hachem is a Switzerland based composer and pianist, who was born in Lebanon to parents of musical backgrounds. His father played Violin while his mother had a great talent for Piano. He developed an impeccable ear refined over time listening carefully to his mom’s music. He grew up surrounded by sounds, music sheets as well chords which served an important role during his childhood years due to war-torn country’s complicated politics. However, whenever fire ceased he would play piano left handed even if it meant practicing alone! Find even more details at Johnny Hachem.
As music theory, can you explain for other artists why it is advantageous to discover classical chord progressions and harmonies and apply them into any genre? Johnny Hachem: Of course, it’s advantageous to discover classical chord progressions and harmonies because they are the basic of almost all the music genres or let’s say they will enrich their musical thoughts even if they won’t be used the classical school way they can affect them unconsciously. It’s well needed to study all these things but at the end, when you compose, you must not to be making just a harmony exercise: you should really have the talent to add your own thoughts…
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 Hachem composer and pianist, was born in Beirut. He is a live performer, as well as a film composer. He holds two international awards including the 2009 international award for the Music Composition from the The International Composition Conference (Cergy-pontoise, France). The music industry in the US is huge. With a lot of mainstream and underground musicians trying to make it big in the industry, it is only a handful of extremely talented individuals who shine bright in the crowd.
How does it feel these days living in Ukraine, a tinderbox in the world, a multi-ethnic country, one famous for art and creativity? Johnny Hachem: I love Ukraine so much, it is my second country by all meanings. First, this country is very beautiful and so are its people. I got to know my wife Tetiania (Ukrainian) when I was giving a concert here nine years ago and I fell in love with the Ukrainian culture. The people of this country love music and art and they are pioneers in all artistic fields.