Persian New Year NorouzAn Evening of Music and Poetry

Saturday 24th March 2012

Organised byThe Centre for Iranian Studies, LMEI, SOASandThe British Institute of Persian Studies

Sponsored byThe Hinduja Foundation

© F

elix

Gon

zale

s

بوی باران ، بوی سبزه ، بوی خاکشاخه های شسته ، باران خورده ، پاک

آسمان آبی و ابر سپید ،برگ های سبز بید ،

عطر نرگس ، رقص باد ،نغمۀ شوق پرستوهای شاد ،

خلوت گرم کبوترهای مست ...نرم نرمک می رسد اینک بهار

خوش به حال روزگار

Persian New Year Norouz: an Evening of Music and Poetry

7.00pm Welcoming Remarks Narguess Farzad7.15pm Performance by City Daf Ensemble City Daf Ensemble

City Daf Ensemble is a fifteen-member percussion-based ensemble performing music from different regions in Iran. Tonight’s performance is based on melodies and rhythms inspired by Kurdish magham music, a per-cussive sound encapsulating some of the most authentic Kurdish dance tunes.

7.30pm Afghan Music Played and Sung by Professor John Bailey and Veronica Doubleday Professor John Bailey, ethnomusicologist at Goldsmiths College, University of London Veronica Doubleday, singer, musician, writer

John Bailey is an ethnomusicologist who has set up the Afghanistan Music Unit at Goldsmiths College and is involved in international efforts to regenerate Afghan music in Kabul. He plays various types of dutar from the two-stringed instrument of rural amateurs to the much more complex fourteen-stringed dutar now typical of professional urban musicians. His main teacher was the highly regarded player Gada Mohammed. Veronica Doubleday, married to John Bailey, is actively involved in the research of Afghan music. Veronica’s influential musical teachers were her neighbour and amateur enthusiast Madar-e Zahir, and the locally famous professional singer Zainab Herawi. As well as learning to sing in the Herati style, Veronica learnt to play the daireh (frame drum) which women use to support their voices. Veronica is the author of Three Women of Herat: A Memoir of Life, Love and Friendship in Afghanistan. John and Veronica have given regular concerts at various venues and festivals in Europe and in the United States and have worked with a number of other musicians.

7.55pm Song performed by Students of Persian at SOAS8.00pm Reception and sale of raffle tickets9.00pm Performance of Lieder by Schubert and Wolf, based on Goethe’s WestÖstlicher Divan and the Divan of Hafez Sanaz Sotoudeh, Pianist, Royal Academy of Music Benjamin Appl, Baritone, Guildhall School of Music and Drama

Sanaz Sotoudeh completed her B.Mus. and M.Mus. in solo piano performance at McGill University in Canada with Marina Mdivani, pupil of Emil Gilels, and has worked with Canada’s finest pianist/vocal coach, Michael McMahon. In summer 2011, she completed her postgraduate studies in piano accompaniment at the Royal Academy of Music and has performed in music festivals throughout North America and Europe. She is a member of the Academy’s prestigious ‘Song Circle’ and was invited to participate in Daniel Barenboim’s West-Eastern Divan Orchestra and Chamber music concerts in August 2011 in Spain.

Benjamin Appl made his acclaimed debut at Berlin’s State Opera ‘Unter den Linden’ in 2011 singing Baron Tusendorf in a new production of Eötvös’s Tri Sestri, followed by his first King in Orff ’s The Story of the King and the Clever Young Woman at the Carl-Orff Festival Andechs - a part he will revive in 2012. In 2011 he made his debut with the Berlin Philharmonic singing lieder by Mahler and at the International Festival Hei-delberger Frühling singing Beethoven’s An die ferne Geliebte. He has performed in programmes worldwide including Wolf ‘s Italian Songbook and the Schubert cycles Die schöne Müllerin and Winterreise.

9.20pm Hafez Animation Jila Peacock, artist and calligrapher

In this animation, Tongue of the Hidden, David Alexander Anderson joins forces with Iranian-born calligra-pher Jila Peacock to bring the works of thirteenth-century Persian metaphysical poet Hafez to life. Using only Hafez’s letters and words, they create an ethereal, shimmering landscape, with characters swaying like leaves on a tree and rising like smoke from a fire. In her book, Ten Poems from Hafez, the whole Persian text of each poem has been designed in the shape of the animal mentioned by Hafez in the text.

9.30pm Songs from Hafez Music by Sally Beamish, British contemporary composer Tenor: Rónan Busfield, Royal Conservatoire of Scotland Harpist: Sharron Griffiths, Scottish Symphony Orchestra

The songs are settings of the fourteenth-century Persian Sufi poet, each using a bird or animal to describe separation from, and longing for, the Beloved. Sally Beamish chose these texts after seeing Jila Peacock’s extraordinary book, Ten Poems from Hafez. The music attempts to create the mood of each poem; the first, Nightingale, set against an ostinato accompaniment, and the second, Peacock, created almost entirely from ‘falling’ motifs. The third poem, Fish, is directly inspired by an Iranian motif, which develops into fast flow-ing, breathless semiquavers. Hoopoe uses the bird’s call as a refrain throughout, with the piano repeating paragraphs of intensifying chords.

Rónan Busfield is currently studying at the Alexander Gibson Opera School at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland under Stephen Robertson. He has been awarded the RCS Florence Veitch Ibler Prize for Oratorio and first prize (RCS Margaret Dick Award). After graduating with a music degree from Magdalen College, Oxford, Rónan worked for five years as a Lay Clerk at St George’s Chapel, Windsor Castle. Rónan is looking forward to performing La Cenerentola and The Fairy Queen with Glyndebourne Festival Opera Chorus.

Sharron Griffiths started playing the harp at the age of ten in her native Wales and studied at the Royal Northern College of Music and Trinity College of Music. Sharron works regularly with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, Royal Scottish National Orchestra, Scottish Opera, Northern Sinfonia and the Scottish Chamber Orchestra. She is the harp tutor for the National Children’s Orchestra of Scotland and teaches stu-dents from the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, Glasgow & Edinburgh Universities.

10.00pm Parvaz Ensemble Arash Moradi, Niloufar Habibian and Fariborz Kiannejad

The Ensemble was established in 1984 by London-based musicians Arash and Fariborz and its music is based on Kurdish magham music of Iran considered to be one of the oldest music genres in the world. In this performance Parvaz collaborates with the prominent Qanoun (plucked dulcimer) player Niloufar Habib-ian who studied the classical Persian music repertoire known as radeef and trained with the grand Maestro Mohammad Reza Lotfi. She later joined the renowned Chavosh Ensemble under the directorship of Maestro Lotfi with whom she performed as a solo Qanoun player in various recordings and public performances. Ar-ash lives in London where he teaches tanbour and runs workshops on Persian music. Fariborz holds regular percussion workshops throughout the UK. He is currently the Ensemble Leader of the Middle Eastern Per-cussion Ensemble at City University.

10.30pm Raffle Prize: A unique embossed Calligraphy by Jila Peacock (below) Closing Remarks

Persian New Year, NorouzAn Evening of Music and Poetry

Date Saturday 24th March 2012Time 7.00pm - 10.30pmVenue Brunei Gallery Lecture Theatre School of Oriental and African Studies Russell Square London WC1H 0XGAdmission £25; concessions £15 (to include canapés, drinks and sweets in the interval)

Organised by The Centre for Iranian Studies, LMEI and The British Institute of Persian Studies

Sponsored by The Hinduja Foundation

Enquiries & Bookings Louise Hosking - Tel. No.: 020 7898 4330, E-mail: lh2@soas.ac.uk Website: http://www.soas.ac.uk/lmei-cis/events/