Musician, video artist and puppeteer Yara Asmar weaves fabled dreamscapes, at once uncanny yet intimate and cozy, noises from a long-forgotten drawer in the Beirut studio she shares with her two cats (Mushroom and Fejlé). She incorporates the accordion and different electronics in her productions.

“Her music is strange, adventurous, elongated and highly idiosyncratic” –  Bob Baker Fish, Cyclic Defrost.

Described as “a truly dreamy, translucent and amorphous album of delicate classicism, explorative percussion and ambient” (Monolith Cocktail Review), her debut album Home Recordings 2018-2021 -captured on tape recorders and phone through lo-fi processes- was released on Hivemind Records in 2022. “Tiny worlds expand and contract in the palm of Yara Asmar’s hand.” Writes Brad Rose from Foxy Digitalis. “These recordings are remarkable in their ability to command attention in the gentlest terms. There are stories to find on this album and new worlds to discover.“

The sound palette of her second release “Synth Waltzes & Accordion Laments” is honed, with more focus on synth work and accordion drones. Her track ‘Jumana’ -released on this album- was featured in The Wire Magazine’s ‘Below the Radar’. Her latest collaboration with Louis Carnell has been released on Mute Records. She has also performed with Cocorosie’s Bianca Cassidy, Piotr Kurek and Omma.

Yara’s tape loop installation, “The Cut-Throat Finch Preludes” and her interactive sound piece, “Sonatina for 19 Music Boxes” were exhibited in the Black Forest in Germany as part of the Vogelklang Sound Festival. Her commissioned work includes her piece, “5:04 PM” for the Listening Biennial and the original soundtrack for Daniele Rugo’s film on the Lebanese civil war, “The Soil and the Sea ”.

For the past year, she has been performing in Lebanon and abroad, namely at the Jazzwerkstatt Festival (Switzerland), Volksbühne (Germany), El Cortez Theater (Taos, New Mexico), Bozar (Belgium) among other places.