Richard Horowitz

by Carol Wright Composer and multi-instrumentalist Richard Horowitz specializes in music from the Middle East. From 1968 to 1979, Horowitz lived in Paris and Morocco, where he studied music, Arabic, French, and Oriental philosophy while performing throughout Europe and Morocco. Horowitz has musical roots in classical, jazz, and electronic/computer music, and he has studied trance, tribal, classical, and sacred music from North Africa to Indonesia. He plays keyboards, percussion, and various wind instruments, including the ney, an obliquely blown reed flute. Horowitz has scored many feature films and received a Golden Globe and the Los Angeles Film Critics Association award for his work on The Sheltering Sky, directed by Bernardo Bertolucci. In 1981, Horowitz began to work with Sussan Deyhim, a singer born in Tehran. They have performed together internationally since 1984 and have collaborated on media theatre pieces, ballets, and feature and short film music projects. Their 1997 Sony Classical album Majoun featured a stellar array of guest artists from world music, rock, and jazz. Jaron Lanier, the father of virtual reality, is a frequent collaborator; in 1997, the two presented a visual performance duet (virtual motion to music) at MIDEM in Cannes, Japan, and Brazil. He has lived in London since 1994.