Sœur Marie Keyrouz

Marie Keyrouz was born in 1963 in Deir el-Ahmar, near Baalbek in the Beqaa valley. She was raised in the Maronite rite and entered the Congregation of the Basilian Chouerite Sisters, which follows the Melkite rite — a double inheritance that runs through everything she sings.

Her training was long and unusually academic for a singer. She took a doctorate in musicology and religious anthropology at the Sorbonne in 1991, a postgraduate degree in the study of religions at Saint Joseph University in Beirut, and studied classical singing, Eastern and Western, at the Holy Spirit University of Kaslik. She went on to found and preside over the International Institute of Sacred Chant in Paris.

What she performs is the liturgical repertoire of the Christian East, sung largely in Arabic: Maronite, Byzantine and Melkite chant, alongside her work on the older Western traditions, Ambrosian and Gregorian, and the classical sacred repertoire.

In 1984, during the Lebanese war, she formed the Ensemble de la Paix. Its musicians and singers come from different religions, nationalities and cultures, and the name says plainly what the group was for. Her recordings carried the sound well beyond Lebanon, and she has sung across Europe and the Middle East ever since.