Author: elenanyc

Written by Sebastian Baczkiewicz
Directed by Steve Bond and Joby Waldman
Music and Sound Design by Sami El-Enany

A Reduced Listening Production for BBC Radio 4

After decades of searching the Valley of the Kings, British archaeologist Howard Carter and his newly appointed Egyptian assistant Shafiq Tadros uncover a step leading to the tomb of Tutankhamun. Funder Lord Carnarvon and his daughter Lady Evelyn arrive and an unauthorised inspection of the tomb takes place. Decades later a chance meeting on the streets of Paris with an Egyptian student causes Shafiq to excavate his own story.

In November 1922 the discovery of Tutankhamun's tomb became the biggest news story in the world. Virtually untouched for over three thousand years, the tomb contained priceless artefacts including a solid gold coffin, thrones, archery bows, trumpets and fresh linen underwear. Egypt, newly liberated from British rule, hailed the discovery of Tutankhamun as a symbol of its glorious rebirth as an independent nation. But who will control the terms of the dig, and who will keep the treasure?

Original drama based on true events. Written by Sebastian Baczkiewicz

-NOMINATION: Best Sound Fiction: Phonurgia 2022-
-NOMINATION: Best Use of Sound: BBC Drama Awards 2021-

Written, Composed and Produced by Sami El-Enany

Owlman performed by Joe Winnsmith
String necklace performed by David Denyer
Birdsong performed by Jessica Winter

A Falling Tree production for BBC Radio 3

Part tone poem and part narrative reimagining of Remedios Varo’s painting of the same name, Creation of the Birds by Sami El-Enany is a fantastical exploration of the metamorphosis from an abstract idea to a finished artwork. Varo’s painting depicts an anthropomorphic owl sitting at a desk, drawing a series of birds. After being drawn, the birds are imbued with starlight refracted from a magnifying lens in the owl’s other hand and come to life, taking flight out of a window into the night.

El-Enany chose to focus on three main aspects for his Creation of the Birds, the Owl as the creator, their tool - the string instrument brush that hangs from their neck, and the very birds that are worked into existence. El-Enany sent a microphone to Joe Winnsmith, an avid conservationist and bird enthusiast in a small village in Scotland, to play the part of the Owl. Together, Winnsmith and El-Enany devised a system of personifying and biographing the birds that would be conjured to life by the Owl. For the magical stringed instrument, El-Enany decided to use an entirely custom-tuned and prepared hammered dulcimer to create a unique sound that would not be recognisable as any known string instrument to a listener. With violinist David Denyer, he created a palette of improvised bowing, plucking and hammering techniques to embody the characteristics of the birds. Finally, for the birds themselves, El-Enany slowed down field recordings of birds to allow them to be 'mimicked' by a human voice. Working with vocalist Jessica Winter, the recording of the human voice is then sped up to create the sense that these birds were being ushered from a metaphysical plane into our very world, no longer immaterial, now palpable and real.

El-Enany’s Creation of the Birds is a look at the private life of an artist, the origins of inspiration, and an ode to the personalities of beautiful birds and the landscapes they inhabit. The piece is in three movements - The Skylark, The Oystercatcher and The Blackbird.

Emerging from a desolate landscape, a woman ascends to an alter where she conjures strange entities through ritual magic.

Her first incantation calls forth the totemic horse. Now bestowed with wings, the horse takes flight immediately, unwilling to abide by any other’s will, they are freed into the world.

Next, the caster arranges her ingredients on the alter, readying herself for the second summoning. The woman’s voice, transcendent and impassive, goads the hyena into the world. feral and fluctuant, the human-animal hybrid makes a mockery of decorum. Her call: both taunting and tantalising, her wildness: a virtue.

The ritual deepens, the caster now enacts both somatic and verbal components in her spell while a liquid within an egg-shaped cauldron begins to bubble. The vessel transforms, more egg now than pot, spewing shrouded visages, an open red mouth, a protruding tongue, carrion-feasting chicks. The scavengers of death are given life, the shapeless caster is reborn.

Both fantastic and believable, playful and cryptic, A Summoning is a sonic narrative inspired by the iconography and visual storytelling found in the paintings of Leonora Carrington. A Summoning is inhabited by some of Carrington’s most treasured beasts.

Leonora Carrington, Self-Portrait (Inn of the Dawn Horse),1937-1938