Shelley Hirsch & Thea Farhadian Improv

Thea Farhadian (violin), Silvia Matheus (electronics)
Track title: Alma
Live Recording by Michael Zelner, Luggage Store Gallery - 
San Francisco, Dec 2022
Mixed by Silvia Matheus

www.theafarhadian.com
https://soundcloud.com/silvia-a-matheus

"Alma" - Thea Farhadian (violin) & Silvia Matheus (electronics).aup

VOICES FROM BEHIND THE VEIL, 21:23, 2004 (In English and Arabic)

Voices from Behind the Veil, integrates interviews of Egyptian women on the subject of the hijab (the various head and body coverings of Islamic women) into a multilingual sound collage of women's voices. By weaving women's opinions, stories, and discussions about the hijab together, Voices from Behind the Veil reveals the multifaceted opinions and emotions by using a variety of communication styles, some completed statements and other partially revealed dialogues, yielding a richness of diversity in sound and content. The primary impetus of this project is to shift the (western) gaze from stereotypical assumptions easily conjured by visual images of veiled women to an aural encounter where the women (both veiled and not veiled) speak for themselves. 

Material for this project was gathered in the summer or 2003, where I was studying Arabic music with Egypt’s well-known violinist, Alfred Gamil. The interviews are comprised of all Egyptian women who represent varied perspectives on veiling—two women are unveiled, one woman wears a more “Spanish” veil, another with a traditional hijab (headcovering that covers all of the hair), and one with. The participants are also diverse with respect to their age, socio-economic class, and education. Subjects covered in the interviews include personal stories, historical and cultural phenomena, relationship to the body, other women, men, fashion, family, the western world, the workplace, Islam, and societal expectations. Behind the layered interviews is a background of street sounds in Cairo.


Voices from Behind the Veil - Excerpt 2:00

Redblue

Büroklammer

House of Colors

Santomieri-Farhadian Duo

A New Sense of Place
© 2020
Multichannel Duets for Violin & Guitar (50 min) 
[Two samples, 2:00]

We, violinist Thea Farhadian and guitarist Dean Santomieri, have been performing together since 2011. Our music is almost exclusively improvisational - created in the moment, from among many stylistic and global musical influences. Our creative process results in a conversation. One player begins and the other responds intuitively - based upon the timbre, pitch, energy, and artistic direction of the music. The two instruments are spatially isolated among the speakers in the eight-channel overhead array. It is our hope that people moving through the plaza will be pleasantly roused from their thoughts, conversations, or devices, by the unexpected gift of music.

Thanks to Myles Boisen and David Kwan, for recording and multichannel mixing.

Commissioned by the Civic Arts Commission of the City of Berkeley Sentence

Thea Farhadian is a performer/composer who works with solo violin and interactive electronics, acoustic improvisation, solo laptop, radio art, and video. Her solo pieces for violin and electronics combine a classical music background with extended technique and digital processing. As a free improviser, she has performed and recorded with musicians internationally. Her work has been seen at venues which include the Issue Project Room, and Alternative Museum New York City, Galerie Mario Mazolli, Sowieso, and Quiet Cue in Berlin, the Room Series, Meridian Gallery, and Center for New Music in San Francisco, and the Center for Contemporary Experimental Art in 
Yerevan, Armenia. Thea is a former member of the Berkeley Symphony orchestra where she played under Kent Nagano for ten years. For more information visit www.theafarhadian.com

Dean Santomieri composes and performs using electric resonator guitars in non-standard tunings. Stylistically his playing is most closely associated with the modern classical avant-garde and is characterized by a loose compositional framework that allows for improvisatory explorations. Since 2011 he has been playing and recording with violinist Thea Farhadian, in the Santomieri-Farhadian Duo. He also regularly performs as a spoken word artist, usually with musical accompaniment. His stories and poems are inspired by music, dreams, the visual arts, word games and intentionally misheard / misread items from radio and newspapers. In addition to performing with various improvisors, he has been a member of the groups: Donkey Boy, Malcolm Mooney and the 10th Planet, Ghost in the House, I Franzen and the Cornelius Cardew Choir. More info and recordings at: http://deansantomieri.com/

Art on the Plaza, Sound Installation, Downtown Berkeley BART Plaza

A New Sense of Place, 2020

Thea Farhadian is a performer/composer based in the San Francisco Bay Area. Her projects include solo violin and interactive electronics, acoustic improvisation, solo laptop, radio art, and video. Her solo pieces for violin and electronics combine a classical music background with extended technique and digital processing using the program Max/MSP. Thea divides her time between San Francisco and Berlin. 
www.theafarhadian.com

tfarhad

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