Samir Bendimered – Composer, Conductor & Pianist

                          'At the Crossroads of Eastern heritage and Western contemporaneity'

2025–2022: Recent Works & International Projects
In August 2025, Samir Bendimered was invited as composer to the 20th edition of the Chamber Music Festival in Chiré-en-Montreuil (France), where he presented two of his early operas, including Kitch (1990) and La Sonate à Kreutzer (1995), based on Tolstoy's novella with a libretto by Laurent Demoulin.
Earlier in the year, he worked as rehearsal pianist for Bushra El-Turk’s opera Oum, premiered at Dutch National Opera Ballet in Amsterdam.

In 2022, he served as répétiteur for the world premiere of Woman at Point Zero, also by Bushra El-Turk. The production toured across major cities: Aix-en-Provence, Antwerp, Bruges, Ghent, Luxembourg, London, Vienna, Seoul, and Helsinki.

That same year, his chamber music work Conversations Avec…, inspired by Saint-Saëns, Strauss and Piazzolla, was premiered by Ensemble Fragments in Namur.

2012–2021: Opera, Ensemble Work & Cross-Cultural Creation
In 2012, he founded the Sawt ensemble, dedicated to North African and Oriental repertoire. He toured with singer Naziha Meftah throughout Belgium, Morocco, Algeria, and France.
His opera Safina (2010), for which he wrote the libretto, music, and stage direction, premiered in Brussels.

He has collaborated with a wide range of musicians, including Abid Bahri, Sawt Trio, Guy Danel, Naziha Meftah, Ensemble Fragments, and the Iktar and Qantra ensembles.

Among his vocal and chamber works:

• No More and No Less, I'm a Woman (2019), on a text by Mahmoud Darwish (English translation by Fady Joudah), performed by Liselot De Wilde (voice) and Sophie Vanden Eynde (theorbo)

• Au loin dans la voix (2022), a vocal and piano triptych premiered at Baixu, Brussels.
    - 1. Clair de Retrait
    - 2. Mon Après Voix (text by Jacques Aswad)
    - 3. Rondo
    The work was performed  by  :                                                                                                                Alessandro Cervino (piano) and Lorenzo Carola (voice)

1990–2010: Early Works, Education & Conducting
Samir Bendimered began music at the age of four, first with piano, then with guitar and voice. He studied Arab-Andalusian music in Oran and Tlemcen before moving to Belgium to study piano, harmony, and counterpoint.

He composed several works in the 1990s, including:

• Drôlatorio (1994), for choir, orchestra, and soloists (texts by Raymond Queneau)

• Reflet (1994), for wind septet

• Vertigo (1994), for piano and oboe

• La Sonate à Kreutzer (1995), for piano and narrator

As a conductor, he has led performances of:

• Pergolesi’s Stabat Mater, Mozart’s Requiem and Coronation Mass, Fauré’s Requiem

• Bach’s Mass in B Minor, Handel’s Messiah, Brahms’ German Requiem, Arvo Pärt’s Berliner Messe

• Purcell’s Dido & Aeneas and King Arthur

He trained with renowned conductors such as Pierre Cao, Denis Meunier, Pierre Boulez, and Peter Eötvös. He remains active as a keyboardist, performing continuo parts in his own productions.