Where Thou Smile, There is Home is a duo composed for violin and viola. It was commissioned by violist Muriel Razavi and violinist Ava Bahari.
Stay tuned for premiere information at the Houbara Festival in Cologne in April 2024.
How Could I Know is a duo for clarinet and piano commissioned by Toronto-based clarinetist, Peter Stoll. It is inspired by Rumi's Ghazal, Swallowing the Sun.
How Could I Know explores my feelings and lived experiences vis à vis the Women, Life, Freedom movement. The composition begins with a melody based on the overtone series of clarinet, in an “incorrect” order and register. As the theme develops, this material transforms by way of spectral, atonal, and total serialist compositional techniques. The final thematic statement presents the same opening material, now in a corrected order and register. Through this transformation, from chaos to ordered arrival, I aim to depict the small, internal changes necessary to realize transformation.
HOW COULD I know this melancholy
Would make me so crazy,
make of my heart a hell
of my two eye raging rivers?
How could I know a torrent would
snatch me out of nowhere away,
Toss me like a ship upon a sea of blood,
that waves would crack the ship’s ribs board by board,
tear with endless pitch and yaw each plank
that a leviathan would rear its head,
gulp down the ocean’s water,
that such an endless ocean could dry up like a desert,
that the sea-quenching serpent could then split that desert
could jerk me of a sudden, like a Korah, with the blend of wrath
deep into a pit?
When these transmutations came about
no trace remained of that desert or the sea
How should I know how it all happened
since how drowned within Howlessness?
What a multiplicity of how could I knows?
But I don’t know-
for to counter that sea
rushing in my mouth
I swallowed a froth of opium
Ghaal 1855
Translated by late Dr. Franklin D. Lewis
His Gabbah Is Turquoise (2022), is a composition for double bass and piano comissioned by Ali Kian Yazdanfar for Sayeh Roshan Project.
His Gabbah Is Turquoise (2022) is a commission by Ali Kian Yazdanfar for the Sayeh Roshan Project. Its musical elements are inspired by patterns, textures and colors found in Gabbah. Gabbah in Farsi means raw, natural, and uncut and is a type of Persian rug with bright colors and rough and primitive textures. Its patterns are formed by asymmetric and symmetric knots and can be as diverse as the mind and imagination of its craftsman. The color turquoise represents wisdom, tranquility, protection, good fortune, and hope.
When I asked Ali what elements of Iranian music or culture most interested him, he referred to his memories with his father talking about different aspects of Persain culture. I have been wanting to compose a piece dedicated to my father as well. His Gabbah Is Turquoise is a homage to the fathers.
We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts. Nous remercions le Conseil des arts du Canada de son soutien.
The Seville Orange Tree is a composition written for flute and piano. It was co-commissioned by flutist, James Strauss and pianist, Andre von Frasunkiewicz, in 2017 for the Bicentenary of the Birth of Bahaullah, the founder of Baha'i Faith.
Its Around 130 is a composition for marimba and fixed media. It is inspired by my baby boy's heart beat that I recorded on week 28th when I visited my doctor.
The tape part includes: my baby's heart beat, sound effects edited and processed on dumbak, recording of my husband's voice reading a passage about our baby's name, Elia, parts of my conversation with my doctor as well as other sound effects that represents sounds that a baby may hear when he is still inside his mom.
I would like to thank amazing and talented dumbak player, Bijan Rahmani, for recording sound effects on Dumbak for this composition.
When the Roses Laugh in Full-blown Beauty is a six-minute duo written for harp and marimba. I also have arranged a version for violin, cello and piano as well as Bb clarinet, cello and piano.
Audio information: performed by Emily Granger (harp) and Chris Sies (Marimba) at 2016 fulcrumpoint Discoveries!
Emily Granger (harp) and Claire Edwardes' (marimba) performance on December 22, 2020 on Youtube: https://youtu.be/HaRBNksSKKA
Dance in your Blood is a song cylce based on three poems of the 13th Century Perisan poet, Rumi, translated into English composed for soprano and piano.
Recently:
Dance in Your Blood won the Top Prize place at 2014 Violet Archer Composition Prize and will be publisehd in the Plangere Canadian Composers Series.
Postlude to Bamdad is inspired by Khoshe Chin in Avaze Esfahan composed by Rohollah Khaleghi and poem by Karim Fakor.
I originally wrote it for Bb clarinet, violin and and vibraphone and later arranged it for violin and cello as well.
A collaboration with Erica McBurney for fixed media and voice for thethe commemoration of the Martyrdom of the Bab.
Arghavan is written for two pianos.
Excerpt perfprmed by Jialiang Zhu and Pei-chen Chen
