Lonnie Holley has been dedicating his life to the practice of improvisational creativity since 1979. His art and music are born out of struggle and adversity, but maybe more importantly: an irrepressible curiosity and natural necessity. That impulse expresses itself in drawing, painting, sculpture, photography, performance, music and film-making.

His work is exhibited and published worldwide and can be found in the collections of prominent museums like The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The High Museum of Art, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Tate Modern and many more.

Holley has released seven highly-acclaimed albums. On Tonky – his most recent album released in March 2025 – he worked with the likes of Mary Lattimore, Alabaster DePlume, Angel Bat Dawid and Saul Williams. The album received many fine reviews, from Mojo, Uncut and Pitchfork, among others.

Lonnie has already toured extensively through the United States, North and South America, Europe, Australia and New Zealand. He has shared stages with the likes of Bon Iver, Animal Collective, Deerhunter, Bill Callahan, Tinariwen and Daniel Lanois.

We open this evening with the Lebanese artist Sandy Chamoun, known to us as a member of the Lebanese sextet SANAM, which we had the pleasure of seeing at our 2024 summer festival Feeërieën.
Chamoun is also a co-founder of The Great Departed, a musical project with political satire that was founded in 2013 and released the critically acclaimed debut album La Bombe in 2016. In addition, she gives solo concerts in which she explores Arabic folk songs with social and political critique. She has performed works by Sheikh Imam and Mona Meraashli, and participated in musical theatre productions such as Political Circus, Welada88, and Aghani Servicet (Taxi Songs).
Her first solo album FATA17OCT was released in 2022, and she is currently working on a second album commissioned by MOPHRADAT.