Biography
Aisha Orazbayeva (b. 1985) is a Kazakh violinist and composer based in Belgium and the South of France, renowned for her fearless interpretations of contemporary pieces and her radical approach to Baroque music and other early repertoire.
Aisha was born and raised in Almaty in a family of musicians and actors, inspired by her grandfather who sang and played the dombra. At the age of four, she saw Aiman Musakhodzhaeva perform on television and decided that she, too, would become a violinist. She began her studies at a specialized music school in Almaty, and continued in Italy and England, where she was quickly noticed for her unconventional playing style and began organizing events dedicated to contemporary music at venues such as Cafe Oto.
Orazbayeva has performed at venues like New York’s Carnegie Hall, HAU2 in Berlin, and the Reykjavik Arts Academy. She has given solo concerts on Radio France and BBC Radio 3, and has also performed at London’s Gagosian Gallery as part of an exhibition of works by artist Richard Serra. Aisha has released nine albums and EPs and works successfully as a composer for film, theater, and dance performances.

Concert
Aisha will present the program built around Music for Violin Alone, an album recorded in 2020 in a makeshift studio in an empty house in Le Poujol-sur-Orb during the first two weeks of the French lockdown. The pieces on the album are the pieces she came to discover and learn during the two years of maternity leave, which have also been two years of creative silence, a search for new approaches, repertoire, and ways of playing.
It is a map of invisible violin sounds where past and present pathways are being drawn and redrawn over and over again until they are confined to a single technique or a broken sound or disappear into total silence.
The Whisperer says:
“The wind once made the same gentle sound in the foliage of the trees—so different—from which the parts of this violin are made. Can that tenderness still be heard today—when we, so loud, need to tell each other about silence?”