Rima Khcheich’s career has been marked by a multitude of encounters and chance meetings that have all shaped her journey through the world of song and music.
Having got on stage for the first time at the age of eight, she spent the first fifteen years of her career mastering and presenting some of the most complex Classical Arabic vocal Forms.
Twenty years later, her meeting with Jazz musicians from the Netherlands with whom she still collaborates opened up a whole new field of possibilities. The stage became a haven from which she could experiment as much as she pleased allowing herself all the possible liberties. From entire concerts in duet with Double Bass player Tony Overwater or clarinetist Maarten Ornstein, to the composition of a text in prose by Abbass Baydoun with her closest collaborator, multidisciplinary artist Rabih Mroué. Music and words were liberated, all the while staying deeply rooted in Arab tarab. That is how, with every album, and every concert, Rima has inched closed towards a sound purified of all artifice.
Even when singing the incredibly popular Sabah, or the mythical Sayyed Darwish, with a full-fledged classical takht, or just percussions, or when readapting standards of Jazz or Baroque music, she brings it all back into her own world.
Every album, every musical experiment, is a voyage. And Rima Khcheich has undertaken many. From the most classical to the most adventurous.
Rima has released seven albums so far: “Orient Express” in 2001, “Yalalalli” in 2006, “Falak” in 2008, “Min Sihr Ouyounak” in 2012, “Hawa” in 2013, “Washwishni” in 2016, and “Ombre de mon amant” in 2018. In each and every work, her voice is not an independent state of mind, rather an essential element in a whole musical concept.