Maryem Tollar

FAOC (Maryem Tollar and Roula Said) stands for the Friggin Arabic Orchestra Company. It's a comedy duo that started as short videos from their long walks during the pandemic, just commenting on the state of their city and the state of the world. They have created three Christmas videos over the last several years. 

Maryem Tollar is also a renowned Egyptian-Canadian vocalist, known for her world music performances. Her voice has been heard on the theme of CBC’s "Little Mosque on the Prairie," and A.R. Rahman’s Bollywood hit, "Mayya Mayya." Tollar was the featured vocalist in Tafelmusik’s production of multi-media performances of “Tales of Two Cities: The Leipzig-Damascus Coffee Houses” and the narrator and vocalist in “Safe Haven”. 

She performed Christos Hatzis’ piece “Syn-Phonia – Migration Patterns” with The Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra and Inuit throat singer Tiffany Ayalik; and his multi-media piece “Constantinople” with The Gryphon Trio and Patricia O’Callaghan. She performs with several Toronto musical groups including Al Qahwa (Traditional Arabic Music and Original compositions); Turkwaz (Traditional Turkish, Greek, Arabic and Balkan vocal repertoire); and storyteller Dawne McFarlane, adding music and sounds for performances at the Toronto Storytelling Festival, The Scottish International Storytelling Festival and at Silence Guelph. 

Maryem toured in the fall of 2022 in “The Cave” (Libretto by Tomson Highway, Music by John Millard, Script by Martha Ross). In 2023 she will be touring with the stage adaptation of Ann-Marie MaDonald’s book “Fall On Your Knees” providing music and acting in the role of Mrs. Mahmoud (Directed by Alisa Palmer, Script by Hannah Moscovitch). 

Maryem was awarded the inaugural Johanna Metcalf Prize for Performing Arts in 2019.