TAWIL & KHOURY talk Atlas, Entropy Stereo, Detroit New Music, and the Arab-American Avant Garde

TAWIL & KHOURY is the duo of Leyya Mona Tawil and Mike Khoury (Detroit). They have collaborated since 2006 in the interest of seeking the intersection between choreography, composition and improvisation.
This artist talk is on the heels of their performance of Atlas at The Lab (Feb 24th). Khoury will discuss his Detroit-based label and venue Entropy Stereo and the music landscape of the area. The duo will also discuss their collaborative process, and their research within the Arab-American Avant Garde.
Mike and Leyya were both born in Michigan, and began training in their respective fields early in life. Their paths of study through classical training, modernist forms and eventually experimental forms were strikingly parallel. After months of initial research, their first DUO performance was at the Contemporary Art Institute of Detroit in 2006. The duo has since performed throughout the states and internationally; along with workshop offerings and published texts.
LEYYA MONA TAWIL (b. 1975) is an artist working with dance and music practices. She is Syrian, Palestinian, American; engaged in the world as such. Her articulation of Arab Experimentalism embeds political sub-narratives and cultural confusions into the performance fabric. Tawil is the director of ELIXIR / TAC – which supports transdisciplinary arts on a local and international level. Her work has been presented in 16 countries and throughout the US, including engagements at The Soap Factory (Minneapolis), TransDance Festival (Cairo), YBCA(San Francisco), Museum of Nonconformist Art (St. Petersburg), Bimhuis (Amsterdam) and the National Opera House of Syria (Damascus). Her work has been written about in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, American Theater Magazine and PAJ: Journal for Performance and Art.
MIKE KHOURY (b. 1969) is an improvising violinist, researcher, and economist. His primary work involves the application of quantitative methods from the social sciences to improvisation. Khoury has performed or recorded with Faruq Z. Bey, Dennis Gonzalez, Wolfgang Fuchs, Simply Saucer, and Alex Cline. He currently performs with The Redford Civic Symphony Orchestra, Inscribe, in duo with Leyya Tawil, in duo with Ben Hall and as a member of the group Devotional. Khoury is the author of a chapter in an anthology of the Arab Avant-Garde and is the curator of the Entropy Stereo label and performance space. He currently records and produces artists from his Redford, MI studio, and laboratory.
Entropy Stereo Recordings was formed from the ashes of Uprising Records by Mike Khoury. Mike started the label in 1997 to make available some of the most important creative music recordings of our time. The label’s goal is to feature work by creative musicians that might not be heard otherwise. The goal is to feature music by improvisational, jazz, free jazz, and challenging music from different artists with diverse backgrounds and experiences.