Born in Tunisia, where she spent part of her childhood, Sandra Bessis has lived in several other countries before settling in Paris at age 18. Her university studies were simultaneously focused on literature, classical guitar and singing.

 

Since the late 80s, she has been exploring Sephardic music, has created several shows and participated in numerous cultural events and festivals.

 

She is regularly invited to perform all over France, as well as abroad (Spain, Italy, Greece, Tunisia, Morocco, Switzerland, Germany, Croatia, the U.S...) and performs in a wide variety of venues to bring her chosen repertoire to life.

 

Sandra Bessis is also a guest performer in various sacred music festivals, where she interprets religious works from the Jewish, Muslim and Christian Andalusian medieval traditions. She actively performs in concerts with an array of musicians, whose backgrounds span Middle-eastern music traditions from Jewish to Muslim, the sacred to the secular.

 

Her first CD, “D'une lointaine Espagne,” was released in 1992 on the ARB music label.
In October of 1994, she and pianist Monique Bouvet (vocal coach for the Paris Opera) created a show entitled “España!,” and based on Spanish popular songs harmonized by Federico Garcia Lorca and Spanish songs of Maurice Ohana.

 

After the release of her second CD of Judeo-Spanish songs and the premiere of her next show entitled “Paseando...” in 1996, she presented a new program based on wedding songs: “Bodas!” which was recorded and released once again by ARB music in September of 2001.

 

 

A fourth CD, “Entre deux rives,” released in October 2005, brings together sephardic songs and other songs of the Mediterranean, including Arab-Andalusian traditions.

 

 

 

 

Accompanying herself on percussion, Sandra Bessis often sings intimate concerts joined by two or three musicians, or in larger group formations, venue-permitting.

Over the last several years, Sandra Bessis has dedicated herself to performing in a wide variety of festivals, and nurturing new works with other notable artists, in a program designed to share and explore musical traditions between Jewish and Arab cultures.

 

 

 

Most recently, in Paris, she performed with Rachid Brahim-Djelloul and Noureddine Aliane a show mixing snippets of stories from Grenada to Istanbul, Bouqalat, popular Algerian women's poetry, history, love songs, instrumental pieces, kantigas, mouwachahat and coplas. In a relaxed atmosphere playing on spoken, sung and instrumental registers, and retracing the path of transmission from one Mediterranean shore to the other, the show celebrated brotherly and romantic union, naïve and bold love, all connected by an invisible thread from Orient to Occident.

 

  Only a few among the most recent concerts and shows.....