The second movement of The Seville Orange Tree will be performed by the wonderful flutist Laurel Swinden and pianist Talisa Blackman on February 4th as part of the Flute Music by Women Composers: An International Online Festival 2022!
Leading Organizers – Scarborough Philharmonic Orchestra and the Flute 360 Podcast
Partners – Montana Flute Association, New Jersey Flute Society, and Texas Flute Society, Association of Canadian Women Composers, and Canadian Music Centre
Sponsored by the Canada Council for the Arts, Toronto Arts Council, and SOCAN Foundation
A proud, recently retired woman and her adult daughter square-off in a grand but faded Montréal apartment. It’s a familiar and tiresome routine for the two of them, but today their complex give-and-take will open a door to an entirely unexpected, terrifying, and potentially wondrous future neither are fully ready to enter. Vanishing Point is a 30-minute opera for soprano, mezzo-soprano, and Pierrot Ensemble instrumentation that I created in collaboration with librettist Nika Khanjani. We have taken elements from our shared history as Iranian immigrants to craft a challenging piece of complex and nuanced emotional shifts, a whiplash of tenderness and bitterness, and a sober question of whether we can reframe a crisis into an opportunity to show up fully present for someone we love even as we watch them slip away. Densely crafted around themes of loss, migration, and unresolved trauma, it asks audiences to bring their attention, patience, and empathy to an emotional canvas that is perhaps uncommon in traditional opera.
We have designed this opera as a vehicle exclusively for BIPOC performers. On the premier performance, Dr. J. Marchand Knight and Fredericka Petit-Homme will embody two women who, like many Iranian immigrants to North America, resist aligning themselves with any simple and reductive category—especially when facing the universal challenges and heartbreak of the loss of identity through dementia.
The world premiere of my opera, Vanishing Point, will take place at Salle Bourgie, Montreal, Quebec on October 10, 2021 at 7:30 pm (EDT).
A movement of my song cycle, Dance in Your Blood, will be performed by: Anne Harley (soprano) and Gayle Blankenburg (piano) at this wonderful concert of vocal chamber music by rising female composers and poets from the Iranian diaspora, featuring a world premiere by Aida Shirazi, songs by Niloufar Nourbakhsh, Niloufar Iravani, and Bahar Taheri, and poetry recitation to Shirazi’s music, by female poet and playwright Sholeh Wolpé.
My solo violin composition, Geyrani, will be performed at Powerful Perspectives: A Recital Celebrating Underrepresented Composers on April 2, 2021, 8:00pm. To join click here:
NayNava for alto flute will be performed by Dustin White at West Virginia University Flute Studio on Wednesday November 11, 2020 6:30pm. The performance will be livestreamed at wvuflutestudio IG and Facebook accounts: https://www.facebook.com/WvuFluteStudio
Crisha Joyner, a doctorate student at Florida State University will be performing Fly Towards a Secret Sky for flute and fixed media at Graduate Flute Studio Recital on Tuesday November 10, 2020 6:30pm.
Percussionist Claire Edwardes and harpist Emily Granger will give the Australian premier of When the Roses Laugh in Full-blown Beauty for harp and marimba at Melbourne Digital Concert Hall on October 22, 2020 7pm.
Nay Nava composed for alto flute was performed by wonderful flutist, Roya Farzaneh, as part of Iranian Female Composers Association's first YouTube concert. Please contact me if you would like to receive private link to the concert.
Flutist Roya Farzaneh, will be performing my composition, The Seville Orange Tree scored for flute and piano at 2020 Mid-Atlantic Flute Convention.
Where: Hilton Washington Dulles Airport (13869 Park Center Rd, Herndon, VA 20171)
When: 1:00pm
For more information please visit: https://fsw.net/
