CAROLE SAMAHA
July 15, 2016 - 8:30 pm

Lebanon’s most talented stage performer opens Byblos Festival 2016 with a brilliant “Song and Dance Show” directed by Gérard Avedissian and choreographed by Sami Khoury with 40 musicians, dancers and choir. Carole Samaha will revisit a highly successful career started in 2003 and present her new album Zekrayati.

Winner of the “World Music Award” (Monaco 2013) for best performer in the Middle East, Carole Samaha is one of a kind in the Arab world. She started her career with Drama Theater in Beirut to pursue later on with leading roles at the Mansour Rahbani Musical Theater with the country’s most renowned actors; she specifically played the role of Zenobia at Byblos Festival in 2007 in the eponym historical musical play written especially for her by the Rahbanis; she stared as well in more than five soap operas. Switching few years later to a solo career as a pop singer, Samaha has released six albums among which her latest “Zekrayati” released in April 2016, is still the top-selling album at the Virgin Megastore in the Arab World. She’s the sole artist who equally combined between singing, acting and show dancing.

Following the prestigious World Music Award, Carole’s talent has been recently recognized in 2013 with the “MEMA Award” in Egypt for the Best Video Clip “Wahshani Bladi”, the BIAF (Beirut International Arab Festival) for her successful career, “Murex D’Or” for Best Female Artist and Multi-talented artist of the year, and many more to come. It is to be noted that Carole Samaha was the official representative of Pepsi in the Middle East for the year 2007, and the United Nations Ambassador for Peace in the Middle East for the year 2008.

Samaha participated in international festivals and stood on the world’s most prestigious stages (Rosemont Theater in Chicago, Detroit Opera House, Las Vegas Casino, Caesar’s Palace Canada, and Le Palais de l’Unesco, Paris) of which we mention her astonishing performance at the famous Mawazine International Festival in Morocco, the International Carthage Festival in Tunisia and lately in May 2014 the lifetime opportunity concert at the Koninklijk Concertbouw stage in Amsterdam along with the Holland Symfonia Orchestra.  Known as a pioneer since her very beginnings, Samaha stared in one of a kind show “The Lady”; an unprecedented musical show in the Arab World. She also took part as a judge in the internationally acclaimed talent show “X factor Arabia” in 2013.

She was lately appointed by the Global Network for Rights and Development (GNRD) as a Goodwill Ambassador. Employing her arts as a healing and encouraging instrument for the people in need, she visited the Al Zaatari refugee camp in Jordan and contributed to the realization of a number of donation projects in Egypt (to develop unplanned areas (slums) in Monsha’a Nasser’s neighborhood in Helwan, South of Cairo) and in Lebanon more precisely at the ‘Association for Orphans’ Care’ in the city of Sidon. Samaha is playing a crucial role in promoting and supporting of the GNRD humanitarian projects for children, women, refugees and other vulnerable groups located all over the world. With the collaboration of the GNRD , Carole inaugurated the year 2015 with a song and clip “Al Shark el Azim”- The great Orient; a message of Peace and Mercy in light of the atrocious massacres and bloody Wars occurring lately in the Arab World.