Miniature piece in Dashti G out of a set of preludes for piano solo by Mehdi D. Ardebili.

Heart Of Sorrow (in Dashti G)

Prelude in C Major out of a set of preludes for piano solo by Mehdi D. Ardebili.

Prelude In C Major

Prelude in A Major arranged for String Quintet out of a set of original preludes for piano solo by Mehdi D. Ardebili.

Romance (in A Major - for String Quintet)

Dedicated in memory of the late contemporary Persian poet Houshang Ebtehaj.
Miniature piece in Dashti E for oboe, violin solo, harp & strings out of a set of original preludes for piano solo. Composed and arranged by Mehdi D. Ardebili.

Window into the Past (in Dashti E - for Oboe, Violin Solo, Harp & Strings)

Khabeh Setareh arranged for Piano Solo by Mehdi D. Ardebili, inspired by Mahyar Fazeli.

Khabeh Setareh (for Piano Solo)

Khabeh Setareh arranged for String Trio by Mehdi D. Ardebili, inspired by Mahyar Fazeli.

Khabeh Setareh (for String Trio)

String Quintet arrangement of the Persian folk song Khooshe Chin. Arranged by Mehdi D. Ardebili.

Tasnife Khooshe Chin (for String Quintet)

Illinois Modern Ensemble, Stephen Taylor, conductor.  8 February 2017.
Sonic Illinois Festival, Krannert Center for the Performing Arts.

Cold Horizon, for chamber orchestra, grew out of a piece for vibraphone and piano entitled Cold, which I wrote in Paris in January 2001.  The basic musical ideas and icy, shimmering instrumental colors of Cold have been stretched out into a supple, continuously flowing, and dramatic form, and colored as if seen at twilight under a fading and distant light.  

In a sense, Cold Horizon explores resonance as a model or metaphor for developing musical gestures and forms.  Often resonance is used to create a sense of perspective, reminding us that music takes place not only in time but also in space. Musical lines that are slightly out of alignment shadow each other as they seem to echo in a reverberant space.  Similarly, rhythmic processes and subtle changes of orchestration create the illusion of musical gestures that approach or recede.  The opening of the piece, a quasi-Doppler effect, is one example.  Another typical idea is the filtering of complex harmonies into simple intervals, floating points of stability that form a thread of consonance woven across the span of the piece.  The use of quarter tones blurs the line between harmony and instrumental timbres to create a sense of depth and shadow against the well-tempered, “normal” pitches.

Cold Horizon has passed through a series of incarnations, beginning with an initial sketch premiered in 2002 by the Orchestre Lyrique de Région Avignon-Provence under Sylvio Gualda at the Centre Acanthes contemporary music festival in France.  The complete piece was premiered in 2003 by the University of California, Berkeley Symphony conducted by David Milnes, followed by a revised and expanded version performed by the Minnesota Orchestra at their Composer Institute in 2006 with David Alan Miller.  I revised the piece one last time in early 2017 for this performance, making some minor adjustments to its pacing, clarifying the orchestration and several harmonic details, and pruning back some pretentious complexity in the notation.

Cold Horizon (2017 Version)

Frederic Chopin: Ballade No. 4 in F minor, Op. 52

Arranged and orchestrated by Phil Justin.

©2020

All the soundset sounds in this transcription are from NotePerformer 3.3, and this is the first piece I've tried using this soundset on any of my works. So I'm really trying to get a feel for what NotePerformer 3.3 can do...

Ballade No. 4 in F minor Op. 52 for Full Orchestra

Physicist, mathematician, composer, pianist, music analyst.