Absence
Composed by Rouzbeh Esfandarmaz & Aftab Darvishi

Clarinet: Rouzbeh Esfandarmaz
Piano: Aftab darvishi

Music production: Rouzbeh Esfandarmaz

Absence (feat. Aftab Darvishi)

Raz-o Niaz - Piano Duo (July 2024)
Performed at RNCM Composers' Concert in July 2024.

Composer: Sina Saloor
Piano I: Ameen Elbadri
Piano II: Kuba Williams

Raz-o Niaz

Rooftop is a fixed media composition inspired by acrophobia, the fear of heights. The piece explores the emotional landscape of someone trapped on the edge of a rooftop, where fear intensifies and lingers. I created and manipulated a variety of sound sources including birdsong, tablet sheets, paper, and guitar strings to evoke this experience.
The narrative draws from personal reflection and sonic experimentation. My pet canary’s song played a central role in shaping the piece; I was especially influenced by certain recurring motifs in his vocalizations. As a guitarist, the instrument naturally became part of my creative language, guiding the piece’s emotional trajectory and textural development.


Rooftop

The technique of “mosaic” is the construction of an image from numerous small tiles. These tiles, called “tesserae”, are separated by the “interstices” (the spaces between the tiles, usually filled with grout). In this piece—an homage to Luciano Berio—tiny fragments are taken from his Sequenza IX for clarinet to form the tesserae of the clarinet part. But they appear in a completely reordered and recontextualised sequence. At the same time, the other instruments resonate, echo and sustain the clarinet, in a manner similar to Berio’s Chemins series. Eventually the interstices enlarge and swallow up the tesserae. Timbral and harmonic distortions merge the two layers, until they decay into sonic abstraction. This piece was written for the Acanthes Festival 2007, and was premiered by members of the Luxembourg Philharmonic Orchestra.

Rooftop

mahtab haghighattalab

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