Current Productions 2024-2028
Woman at Point Zero Opera
On Tour
LOD Musiektheater (Ghent) Production and Commission
Previous performance:
29/30 August (2025) - Helsinki Festival at Finnish National Opera
- German Programme Booklet (Wiener Festwochen)
Woman at Point Zero is an opera by LOD music theatre inspired by the novel by Egyptian writer and feminist Nawal El Saadawi. The opera tells the story of two women: Fatma, who is a self-made feminist and activist imprisoned for man-slaughter and Sama, a young ambitious documentary filmmaker who wants to tell Fatma's story. Fatma describes to Sama how she searches for freedom from the vicious cycle of violence that controls her life. As their relationship unfolds over the course of one day, they share their memories, experiences and secrets - moving from distrust to curiosity and solidarity and finally friendship. What does it mean to be a woman? What does it mean to be liberated? Is it possible to be freer in prison than outside?
“to create an aural dreamscape I'd vouchsafe is to be found nowhere else in the world - *****”
— Gary Naylor, Broadway World
“An extremely eloquent and well-crafted offering by the Lebanese composer Bushra El-Turk” - on Woman at Point Zero Opera
— LE FIGARO
“Striking and innovative”
— Nicholas Kenyon - The Times
“ glittering score…magical score...She has an intuitive grasp of timbral possibilities gathered in Ensemble Zar’s idiosyncratic ensemble...A preponderance of higher instrumental give her writing an unearthly, haunted character, which brittleness balanced by more diaphanous, dream-like moments...El-Turk’s language is wholly her own and atmospherically theatrical... Another fascinating and adventurous piece of programming at the Linbury, whose recent collaborations are a credit to the Royal Opera House” - Benjamin Poore
“El-Turk's music, striking and distinctive”
— Fiona Maddocks - The Guardian/Observer
“...an arresting new piece of music theatre.”
Constellations of Grief - Mozart Requiem Undone
COMMISSION-SEEKING PHASE
Production expected date: Summer 2028
Lead producer: LOD Musiektheater (Ghent) in partnership with Manchester Camerata and Simon Keefe (Mozart Scholar) at Sheffield University
Tom à la Ferme - Music Theatre
CO-COMMISSION SEEKING PHASE
Director: Florent Siaud
Commission from Montreal Opera.
Based on the play by Michel Marc Bouchard.
Retraçant la collision entre un jeune citadin gay et le monde rural, la pièce phare de Michel Marc Bouchard convoque désir et mort, onirisme et puissance terrestre dans un polar implacable. Le texte ausculte la violence des non-dits, l’homophobie qui peut déstructurer un inconscient familial jusqu’au point de nonretour. Il braque la lumière sur le mensonge auquel sont condamnés les homosexuels, auxquels on interdit le deuil de l’aimé et la reconnaissance sociale de l’amour vrai. Il montre aussi comment la détestation de l’autre n’est jamais loin d’une haine de soi. Son quatuor de personnages, à la fois âpre et tellurique, en fait un texte idéal pour nourrir la musique d’un opéra
Community and Outreach Projects
With an artistic compulsion to give voice to marginalised voices through narrative forms and through ways of making music, blurring Eastern and Western idioms and notation and improvisation, Bushra is keen tosee what would happen when her musical language exploded into the other art forms through the vessels of a multimedia live art installation.
Passionate about working with and integrating communities' voices in her work, Bushra’s most notable work was composer in residence with Streetwise Opera, working with asylum seekers and those who have experienced homelessness to devise the text for a composition based on an ancient Chinese story. She was also composer in residence with the BBC Symphony Orchestra’s North Africa and Middle East immersion week, working with communities in North Kensington in London alongside the orchestra to create a set of new works and arrangements of Andalusian songs. With Ensemble Zar, she worked with Birmingham Symphony Hall to collaborate with a story teller, working with primary school children in the region to create a story with music. There was an open score which integrated the artefacts from their diverse cultures so that they felt a true ownership of how the story unfolded and musically, their voices were weaved inside the structure of the whole performance.
More recently, she has composed a symphonic work for multi-ability orchestra called ‘Tuqus’ (trans. Rituals) commissioned by the London Symphony Orchestra (conductor Sir Simon Rattle) that integrates young people from East London schools. This involved writing for three levels of difficulty per orchestral part - Grade 4, 6 and professional standard.
In 2010, she co-founded and ran the Chelsea Music Academy, a centre for Middle-Eastern and Western Music in London, she curated and coordinated inter-cultural workshops that reached all pockets of the London cosmopolitan community for children, teens and adults. They partnered with the BBC Symphony Orchestra, Leighton House Museum, the Kensington Palace Youth Programme, Fête de la Musique Exhibition Road Music Day, Arab-British Centre (ABC) and the Council for British-Arab Understanding (CAABU) to hold workshops in introducing the music of the Middle East and exploring where this rich music stands in contemporary multi-cultural contexts. Projects coming out of these involved working with youth groups, North African rappers, dancers, etc.
She is now co-founding with Joel Bell a new education project, The Alternative Conservatoire, giving access to music creators at the early stages of their careers and of low socio-economic backgrounds who don’t find themselves reflected in the traditional conservatoire and university mould. It is a music accelerator course which aims to tailor the curriculum to the individual, working with a mentor for three months on their project. The course focuses on craft, artistry and bringing their art to the world.