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Beirut, the musical project of Zach Condon, has today announced the release of ‘Caspian Tiger‘. The release comes from a soundtrack he recently composed for Swedish contemporary circus company Kompani Giraff’s international touring production, A Study of Losses. While he shares his fears of being pigeon-holed in comments below, his song, like this circus company, are a far more radical in concept to the circuses of yesteryear. Kompani Giraff describe their productions as ‘as ‘visual and unique circus performances with a foundation of poetic narrative and a passion for magic in everyday life situations…we seek to explore new ground in contemporary circus and make use of our own different experiences in the performing arts to create truly interdisciplinary works of art.‘
Caspian Tiger (another beautiful animal on the world’s growing extinction list), is also a chapter in A Study of Losses (Verzeichnis einiger Verluste), a 2018 book by German author Judith Schalansky. Following the conventions of a different genre, each of the pieces in Schalansky’s Inventory considers something that is irretrievably lost to the world, from the paradisal island of Tuanaki, the Caspian Tiger or the Villa Sacchetti in Rome, to Sappho’s love poems, Greta Garbo’s fading beauty or a painting by Caspar David Friedrich. It is this book, that Kompani Giraff have set out to free-interpret with the music of Beirut playing a key role in the storytelling, posing the question: What have I lost and what am I afraid to lose?
Empires fall, buildings become ruins, cultural artefacts are destroyed, animals become extinct. Most losses we do not recognise, precisely because they are lost. We look at what we think is history, but it is really a series of temporary preservations in a vast sea of losses.
Kompani Giraff
“When I was first approached about writing a soundtrack for a circus, a certain amount of ‘Elephant Gun’-era trauma initially came rushing up. I had been pigeon-holed for years as a whimsical circus waif, full of sepia-toned images of penny farthings and perhaps lion tamers with handlebar moustaches. It couldn’t have been further from how I pictured the music I was making. I had been quietly avoiding the subject for years.
Ironic then, that I found Kompani Giraff’s project so enticing, and writing something for acrobats to perform so enjoyable. ‘Caspian Tiger’ was one of the first songs I wrote for the new album, with images in mind of the poor animals caged or fighting in Roman colosseums. They had been taken from the Asian steppes around the Caspian Sea and from as far east as Tashkent, an area I’ve been fascinated by for years. The sonic influence came in large part from choir music that I was obsessing over at the time.
Perhaps I subconsciously aimed to embrace and even improve on the imagery I had been originally written off for.”
– Zach Condon
Beirut Tour Dates
Aside from three tremendous, sold-out concerts at Berlin’s Tempodrom this past February (one of which can now be seen in full via Arte), Condon has not brought Beirut back on the road since 2019, when persistent throat issues forced him to cancel all remaining live shows and left him questioning whether he would ever perform in front of an audience again. That changes this coming spring, with a run of five special dates at the Netherlands’ TivoliVredenburg, Belgium’s Cirque Royal and London’s O2 Academy Brixton. From May 1st-8th, 2025, Zach Condon will be backed by a new and returning ensemble of band members, performing a set that spans Beirut’s discography, as well as a selection of yet-to-be-released music. All dates are listed below:
May 1 – Utrecht, Netherlands – TivoliVredenburg – Grote Zaal
May 2 – Utrecht, Netherlands – TivoliVredenburg – Grote Zaal
May 5 – Brussels, Belgium – Cirque Royal
May 6 – Brussels, Belgium – Cirque Royal
May 8 – London, UK – O2 Academy Brixton
