Recently, NSUMC’s Music Director/Organist Fady Deeb, was a featured performer at the Palest’In & Out Festival in Paris, France. The three-day festival sponsored by the Arab World Institute in its House of World Cultures, was a celebration of up and coming Palestinian artists in five categories of creative expression: music, dance, photography, and film.

Fady won the music prize for solo performer, and was invited to open the festival on June 11 by playing live the piece that he had recorded to submit as his entry for the competition:  Horizon IV, by Palestinian composer Patrick Lama. Lama left Israel for France amid the unrest and strife of the 1960s, and has lived in Paris for many years, teaching and composing.

Lama is the son of an important figure in Palestinian music, Augustine Lama. At 20 years old Augustine was appointed head organist of the Catholic Church of Palestine. His main job was playing the organ and directing the choir in the church in Jerusalem. Augustine composed pieces as well, but his compositions are not considered to be especially significant, according to Fady.

During his mini-vacation trip to Paris, Fady enjoyed the opportunity of hanging out with Patrick Lama for a day. “He told me stories about his father, about the Six-Day War in 1967 (Patrick was in East Jerusalem then), about the intelligence war which took place in France between the Israeli Mossad and the PLO in the 70s after the Munich massacre.

“We talked about music, about his recently composed opera, and in great detail about how to lose belly fat!!  We also talked about Horizon IV and he gave me some good tips before I performed it.”

Although Fady was born in Israel, culturally he is Palestinian.  “I am an Israeli citizen, I have an Israeli passport, I speak Hebrew almost as well as Arabic, but my culture is Palestinian or Arabic — all the traditions of my family, the food I like, the music I grew up with, everything. I do not identify myself as Israeli by culture, but as Palestinian.  I lived most of my life in Nazareth where my father’s family is from. My family happens to be Christian, which makes me a double minority, my culture and my religion.”

Fady first came to the United States in 2008 for a semester at NYU as an exchange student, and with the desire to study at SUNY Stony Brook with world-renowned pianist Gil Kalish. He began his studies with Kalish in 2009, and will complete his DMA (Doctorate of Music Arts) in December, 2015.  Fady has been NSUMC’s music director and organist since August, 2014.