why the trees were murmuring 
for orchestra, improvising trombonist and two spatial ensemble 
commissioned by Steven and Brenda Schick
soloist: Peter Sloan 
conductor: Steven Schick
written for the La Jolla Symphony
Premiere, San Diego, February 2020 
live-recording
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some words about the piece: 

Why the trees were murmuring is an appreciation of diversity and community. 
In writing this piece, I was moved to explore these themes from various perspectives. Performers are positioned around the concert hall and sounds are embracing the audience. A unique collection of diverse materials and practices has come together and formed a hybrid assemblage in which different kinds of musical practices such as - improvisation, vocalization, and spatialization have joined the orchestra and created a multi-diverse community. 
 
The composition of the musical material is also influenced and shaped based on the qualities of a diversified community.  Aside from having an improviser soloist on the stage, the spatialized ensemble surrounding the audience, and the extensive exploration of instrumental colors, every group of instruments functions additionally as soloists in one or more parts of the piece. At the same time that everything is precisely notated, there is always a level of freedom in every section, which allows the realization of the piece to be a co-joint act.  
 
 
Why the trees were murmuring reveals a journey of the colorful pallet of instrumental sounds hybridized with the whisperings of the fragmented texts. These snippets of texts are selected from Braiding Sweetgrass, written by Robin Wall Kimmerer, and poems by the iconoclast Iranian poet Forough Farrokhzad. 
The piece unfolds into an improvised coda by the orchestra, amidst the bird calls, various bells, the traces of hope, light, and love from the orchestra and the solo trombone and ultimately the orchestra whispering  … “I will greet the sun again” …
 
****

why the trees were murmuring (2020)

Nick Drake Cover (first sketch)

Del Miravad ze dastam-دل میرود ز دستم

02-WELCOME TO MY WORLD

10 - TO MY SOULMATE

GOHAR X GRAIL presents a sonic exploration of the influence of birdsong on the development of the music of Iran, Ireland (Éirinn), Scotland, and the North Caucasus for the first installment of our residence with Beshknow. Gathering music that invokes birds through lyric and aural birdsong mimicry, this mix unites both traditional and experimental approaches to instrumentation and song, examining the figure of the bird across culture and time. Featuring traditional dōtar music from Khorasan, Iran, and piping from throughout the Gaelic world; vocal recordings from avant-garde musicians as broad as Hanna Tuulikki and Joan La Barbara; contemporary bird-mimetic electronic compositions; and field recordings from Canna, Scotland, the North Caucausus, and the shores of Devon, we traverse broad skies through the lens of the Gaelic ceòl, or music: literally ‘a sound like the sound birds make.’ Part I of II. TRACKLIST: Hanna Tuulikki – Away with the Birds (excerpt)

- Dariush Dolat-Shahi – Zahab (Tar & Electronic)  - Dimitris Savva – Stous Theous - Anonymous – Field Recording (shores of Devon) - Rob Kavana & the Alias Acoustic Band – The Wind that Shakes the Barley - Helena Espvall – Improvisation I - Laura Cannell – Field Recording (starlings) - Traditional from Khorasan - Joan La Barbara – Erin - Nilüfer Ormanlı – Sincapca

- 9t Antiope – Seagulls Feast - Zaftig Giolla – Prismatic Sounds [archived by Aisteach Institute Ireland] - Tobar an Dualchais Archive – Mary Morrison vocalizes a strathspey in Canna, Scotland, 1950 - The Restless Dead & Bird People – The Bird People Meet the Dervishes of Khartoum - Coil – Strange Birds - John Wright – Dornoch Links the Shepherd’s - North Ossetian traditional [recorded by Petites Planètes] - Iranian traditional [anonymous solo] - Tobar an Dualchais Archive – Field Recording (birds on Canna) - John Purser – Celtic Saint’s Bell  - Googoosh – Parandeh - Sarah Davachi – Soi-Même Comme La Matin - Catherine Ashcroft – Táimse im’ Chodladh / King of the Pipers - Hanna Tuulikki – Bird in the Tower (improvisation in Nottinghamshire)

Gohar x Grail - vol. 1

Sponsored by Alba Coffee

Track list :
Steve Reich - Clapping Music
György Ligeti – Musica Ricercata II (Mesto, Rigido E Cerimoniale)
Terry Riley - In C
Arvo Pärt - Summa for String Quartet
Philip Glass - Metamorphosis: Three
La Monte Young - Composition 1960 No. 7
Taylor Deupree & Richard Chartier - specification.six
Éliane Radigue - Koume
Ryoji Ikeda - Headphonics 0/0
Pan Sonic - Radiokemia

Minimalism By mHz - Episode 1

برنامه رادیویی چشم‌انداز بامدادی بی‌بی‌سی فارسی، هر روز صبح از ساعت ۷ تا ۹ صبح به وقت تهران، از وبسایت فارسی بی‌بی‌سی، فرکانس‌های پخش ماهواره‌ای تلویزیون فارسی بی‌بی‌سی، فرکانس رادیویی ۱۱۷۲۷ عمودی بر روی ماهواره هاتبرد، و نیز امواج کوتاه و متوسط رادیویی پخش می‌شود.

چشم‌انداز بامدادی ٢٨ فوریه ۲۰٢٢ / ٩ اسفند ١٤٠٠

چشم‌انداز بامدادی ۱۱ مارس ۲۰۲۲ / ۲۰ اسفند ۱۴۰۰

چشم‌انداز بامدادی ٢٢ مارس ۲۰٢٢ / ٢ فروردین ١٤٠١

Mohamad Nikpour started his activity under stage name “ZAB” experimentally and self-taught since 2012. His works cover a wide range of electronic music including Ambient, Downtempo, Chill, Noise and Glitch. The main elements of his music are synthesizers and field recordings. He tries to create atmospheric spaces with textures and synthesized samples which are inspired by Iranian traditional music and world music.
@danceofsoul is his latest project that formed in 2021. In this project he brings a new wave of samples and rhythms from native Iranian musicians.
~
Tracklist:
Hiro Kone - Parting phrase
Ikaru ft. Demirel - Sama
NYX - Void
Get Well Soon - Funny Treats (Modeselektor Remix)
Foam and Sand & Robot Koch - Circle19
Forest Swords - Congregate
Tim Hecker - Music of the Air
DARKSIDE - Narrow Road 
Max Cooper - Weakness Of The Flesh (feat. Samad Khan)
Clams Casino & Ryota Nozaki - Unknown Tokyo
Dance of Soul - Turbulence
William Ryan Fritch - Glossolalia
Shards - Unrest
Kelly Moran - Autowave

KMS027 Dance Of Soul

Anahita Abbasi’s music has been described as “a dizzyingly sophisticated reverie, colorful and energetic. It embodies tremendous timbral exploration and multilayered performance gestures”… (Classical Voice America and A Cunning plan). 

According to Guardian …”She takes even a more radical line with creating dense and pulsing textures”… “Her music has the capacity to immerse the hall into a dark multichannel throat and hissing” … (Bachtrack) 

Volkskrant describes … “the Iranian Anahita Abbasi, shows herself to be a composer with guts in the two-year-old Intertwined Distances Alienating whistling noises and furious fistfights with the keyboard, alternated with delicate strings, lead to a theatrical listening experience” ...

Ernst. M Binder also writes: …“As it is also vivid from the titles of her works such as Dialogues, Situations, Distorted Attitudes, she investigates and gesticulate thoughts and emotions. It is manifestation/ observation of a scene or multiple scenes, which occur simultaneously. She has the tendency to take us with her music on a mystical, puzzling journey and leave us within our thoughts, to find out the “ending” ourselves”… 

About her piece for Mahan Esfahani Boulezian Blogspot writes: …” There was, without doubt, an extraordinarily inventive musical imagination at work, but it was never merely invention: it was a sonic and instrumental drama that seemed somehow to summarise, to extend, and quite properly to question many of the tendencies we had heard so far”…

Anahita Abbasi’s music has been commissioned and performed by distinguished soloists and ensembles such as Mahan Esfahani, Steven Schick, Vimbayi Kaziboni, Rebekah Heller, Sergej Tchirkov, Artyom kim, Ensemble Modern, International Contemporary Ensemble, UmeDuo, Klangforum Wien musicians, Wavefiled Ensemble, San Francisco Symphony Youth Orchestra, Disonart Ensemble, Platypus Ensemble, Quatuor Diotima, Mivos Quartet, Argonaut Quartet, Tak Ensemble, Schallfeld Ensemble, Zafraan Ensemble, Contemporaneous, Blaue Reiter, Off Spring Ensemble, and has been showcased at festivals all around the world among which: Mostly Mozart Festival, The Kitchen, Kennedy Center, Lincoln Center, Niefnorf, Soundnow Festival- Bent Frequency, Roulette, National Sawdust, Mise -En festival (USA), Darmstadt Ferienkurse (Germany), IRCAM – Manifeste Academy (France), Matrix –Experimental studio des SWR, Alte Oper (Germany), BIFEM (Australia), Klangspuren Schwaz (Austria), Sound State festival (Southbank Centre, London), Tectonics (Glasgow), Akademie der Künste (Berlin), United Berlin, Klang Festival (Copenhagen), Tage Neuer Musik, Open music (Austria), Omnibus Ensemble (Uzbekistan), Contempuls (Prague), Tangram Trio (Switzerland), Tongyeong International Music Festival (Korea), neuverBand Ensemble (Switzerland), Ensemble Kollektive (Germany), Acht Brücken Festival (Cologne), Impuls Festival (Austria), Time of Music (Finland), Atlas Festival (Netherlands), Grachten Festival (Netherlands), duo Verso and Bilitis and many others.

Ms. Abbasi has received several awards, including a work-scholarship from the Experimentalstudio des SWR, Freiburg (2014), a Morton Gold ASCAP young composers award (2015), a nomination for “women composers of our time” (2017) as well as the composition prize of the Acht Brücken Festival (2020). In 2022 she has been awarded the Civitella Ranieri Fellowship in Italy and UCROSS Foundation residency in Wyoming. 

Aside from teaching composition, giving lectures and curating workshops on fundamentals of creation, and serving as a juror at composition competitions, she is also a founding member of Schallfeld Ensemble in Graz, Austria as well as IFCA (Iranian Female Composers Association) in the USA, New York..; where she is curating concerts, workshops, conferences, creating platforms and advocating for young composers and acts as their ambassadors in presenting their music to others. 

Anahita Abbasi (world citizen-1985) was born and raised in Iran. In 2005 she moved to Austria and pursued her undergrad at the University of Music and Performing Arts Graz, where she studied music theory with Clemens Gadenstätter and Christian Utz & composition with Beat Furrer and Pierluigi Billone; while working closely with Georges Aperghis, Franck Bedrossian, and Philippe Leroux. In 2014 she moved to the US to pursue her Ph.D. degree in Composition with Rand Steiger at UC San Diego.

Currently, Abbasi is residing in New York and in Paris, where she has been awarded a three-year-long residency with Fondation Singer Polignac and Ensemble Le Balcon (Paris, France). Her upcoming projects are commissions from ensemble “der gelbe Klang”, Kommas and New Babylon, Podium Esslingen, and Ensemble Modern for Darmstadt 2023.

why the trees were murmuring (2020)

Anahita Abbasi

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