Khaled Mouzanar

Khaled Mouzanar is an award winning Lebanese composer, song writer and music producer.

He has composed several music scores for films including After Shave (won the Cesar Award for best short film in 2006), Caramel (won the UCMF Award for Best Music at the Cannes Film Festival in 2008), and Where Do We Go Now? (Won the award for Best Music at the 2011 Stockholm Film International Festival). Mouzanar’s work is rooted in various music genres, ranging from Classical and Jazz music to Mediterranean and Oriental melodies. His compositions also flirt with Brazilian Choro and Argentinean Tango. Mouzanar began experimenting with music at a very young age. His mother (both a guitarist and a singer) who has lived in Mexico passed onto him a passion for South American music. He then studied under the astute guidance of Boghos Gelalian, an Armenian-Lebanese composer. “I learned the rules of music composition by analyzing a cantate of Johann Sebastian Bach every week”, stated Mouzanar.

In the year 2000, he established his first label ‘Mooz Records’ through which he produced the majority of Beirut’s underground music scene. He then established his own recording studio ‘The Abeyrut Studio’ through which he still produces, records and mixes his own work using analog methods and several rare and vintage instruments gathered from all over the world.

In 2009, he composed the music for the opening ceremony of the ‘VIe Jeux de la Francophonie’, which was viewed by 60 million spectators all over the world.

Though Mouzanar derives inspiration for his music from various sources, the script of a given film remains the most important in this regard: “Working with the script gives more freedom to my imagination compared to images or scenes from a movie”.