Calligraphies of Sound

For all its antiquity, the flute has taken a lead, liberating role in the transition to modernism. Pierre Boulez cited Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune as the “origin” point of modern music. Georges Barrère, who played the epochal flute solo that begins Debussy’s trailblazing score at its premiere in 1894, asked Edgard Varèse to write Density 21.5 for him 42 years later. In Lost Wind, Golfam Khayam similarly uses the flute to imagine a new sound world. But the reference point in her case is the rich and diverse Persian classical music tradition.

Like many composers of her generation, Khayam ventured outside her native Iran to continue her studies. After immersing herself in contemporary experimental music in Cincinnati and Geneva, she returned to Iran and now teaches in Tehran. Lost Wind is a written score but breathes the spirit of improvisation that is central to Persian music and offers the flute soloist ample opportunity to make individual choices about phrasing and rhythmic articulation. Extended techniques calling for breathing in and out of the instrument, bending pitch, “aeolian sound,” and the like suggest a wordless poetry being communicated. Khayam’s accompaniment with the deeperrimmed heng gong (a favorite of sound healers) seems to extend the flute’s own voice, often playing in its low range but ascending to the heights at the climax.

Aida Shirazi also refracts Persian traditions through a contemporary and experimental perspective, combining layers of live and processed electronics with onstage improvisation by the kamancheh virtuoso Niloufar Shiri in her new work Yearning, Every Dawn. While growing up in Iran, Shirazi was trained classically in both Persian and Western music and went on to study in Turkey and at the University of California at Davis, where she recently completed her doctorate. A co-founder of the Iranian Female Composers Association (see sidebar on p. 48), Shirazi was able to realize her desire to collaborate with two admired colleagues for her Ojai Music Festival commission (one in live performance and the other through a pre-recorded tape).

In addition to performing and improvising live, Shiri provided Shirazi with recordings of her work to be incorporated into the processed and pre-recorded electronics. The Iranian American soprano Tara Khozein contributed another layer by recording a short improvisatory song based on a text (see p. 48) by the 19th-century poet Táhirih Qurrat al-’Ayn, which was also processed. Shirazi, who spent a period training at IRCAM in Paris, has woven these recorded materials into Yearning, Every Dawn, thus combining sources that are acoustic and electronic, live and recorded, played and sung, improvised and fixed. Rather than merely juxtapose traditions and sound worlds, she aims to create “a hybrid that will sound as natural and organic as possible — so that it’s all of them, and at the same time none of them, but with my voice.”

Edgard Varèse is often cited as a tutelary spirit to colorful figures of the Western avant-garde (Boulez, Stockhausen, Frank Zappa), but his influence extended to non-Western composers. He left an indelible mark on Chou Wen-Chung (see sidebar on p. 64), who became his student and copyist when they met in 1949 and, following the death of Varèse, his literary executor. Density 21.5 dates from the previous decade (1936) and was composed for the above-mentioned Georges Barrère, who planned to inaugurate a newly engineered platinum flute at the upcoming New York World’s Fair. The title refers to the density or specific mass of this rare metal, which is 21.5. (Cocktail party conversation point: The new flute was in fact a platinumiridium alloy with an estimated specific mass of 21.6.) Varèse crafts a novel language from alterations in timbre, use

IRANIAN FEMALE COMPOSERS ASSOCIATION (IFCA)

Aida Shirazi co-founded the Iranian Female Composers Association (IFCA) in 2017 to serve as a platform supporting the creative work of female-identifying composers from Iran. IFCA mentors an aesthetically diverse array of young artists across the Iranian diaspora and advocates for their increased presence through programming and commissions. Music by other composers from IFCA can be heard on the vis-à-vis concert on Friday at 10:00am as well as on The Willows Are New concert on Saturday at 10:00am.

Aida Shirazi

composer/electronics

Born and raised in Tehran, Iran, Aida Shirazi is a composer of acoustic and electroacoustic music. In her works for solo instruments, voice, ensemble, orchestra, and electronics, Shirazi mainly focuses on timbre for organizing structures inspired by language and literature. Shirazi’s music has been featured at festivals and concert series, including Manifeste, Wien Modern, Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, Mostly Mozart, OutHear New Music Week, MATA, Marlboro Music Festival, Direct Current, Taproot, and Tehran Contemporary Music Festival. Her works are performed by Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, International Contemporary Ensemble, Ensemble Dal Niente, Oerknal, Quince Ensemble, Left Coast Chamber Ensemble, among others.

Shirazi holds a PhD in composition and music theory from the University of California, Davis. She has studied with Mika Pelo, Pablo Ortiz, Kurt Rohde, Yiğit Aydın, Tolga Yayalar, Onur Türkmen, and Hooshyar Khayam and participated in workshops and masterclasses by Kaija Saariaho, Mark Andre, Claus-Steffen Mahnkopf, Riccardo Piacentini, and Füsun Köksal.

Shirazi is a 2022 graduate of IRCAM’s “Cursus Program in Composition and Computer Music.” She holds a BM in music composition and theory from Bilkent University (Ankara, Turkey) and a BA in classical piano from Tehran University of Art (Iran.) She has studied santoor (traditional Iranian hammered dulcimer) with Parissa Khosravi Samani.

Text by Tara Khozein based on a poem by Táhirih (Fátimih Baraghání), translated by Dr. Amin Banani

Just let the wind untie my perfumed hair my net will capture every wild thing there.

“Oh Heaven, Heaven, Heaven you yearn to see me every dawn, so go on. Pick up your looking glass, look down.

Just let me paint my flashing eyes with black and I will make this hellbent world turn back.

Oh Heaven, Heaven, Heaven

If I should pass a temple by chance one day, One thousand angels would rush to my aid.

Just let me open up my blood red mouth And I will sing away these fatal vows

Oh Heaven, Heaven, Heaven

You see me reaching up through the light,

So go on.

Take your golden scissors, Join your brothers, join your sisters

And join the fight.”

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 47

Calligraphies Of Sound

of the extreme high and low ends of the register, and percussive effects.

Varèse mentored the young Chou WenChung, who in turn had a profound influence on the generation of composers emigrating from China after the Cultural Revolution (including Ge Gan-Ru, Lei Liang, and Tan Dun). Chou Wen-Chung anticipated their quest to synthesize Asian and Western idioms in his own integration of classical Chinese aesthetics with a contemporary sensibility. Also a prominent scholar, Chou Wen-Chung described Varèse’s concept of sound as “living matter” as “a modern Western parallel of a pervasive Chinese concept: that each single tone is a musical entity in itself, that musical meaning lies intrinsically in the tones themselves, and that one must investigate sound to know tones and investigate tones to know music.”

This overarching idea pervades the subtly fluctuating soundscape of Echoes from the Gorge, completed in 1989 after a lengthy break from composition during which Chou Wen-Chung had worked on his edition of Varèse’s scores. Among Chou Wen-Chung’s most substantial works, Echoes is regarded as on one level a tribute to his former mentor as well.

Chou Wen-Chung organizes his quartet of percussionists to preside over a vast panoply of instruments. These are divided into various family groups based on timbre (wood, metal, skin, and various other kinds of drums), articulation, and even where and how the instruments are struck.

Chou Wen-Chung’s devotion to Chinese calligraphy and its philosophy also informs the shaping of sounds in a delicate balance between predetermination and seeming spontaneity.

In the view of Steven Schick, Echoes from the Gorge ranks with the most significant yet overlooked works for percussion written in the 20th century. Comprising an introduction and 12 sections labeled with nature imagery (“echoes from the gorge,” “falling rocks and flying spray,” etc.), the piece reflects what Chou Wen-Chung described as “the preeminent musical form in East Asia, wherein all sections of a composition are elaborations or reductions of one and the same nuclear idea.”

This concert is approximately 45 minutes.

This concert is made possible with the generous support of Smith-Hobson Foundation Fund, Ventura County Community Foundation

The concert appearance of Emi Ferguson is made possible by the generous support of Carolyn and Jamie Bennett

The Ojai residency of the Iranian Female Composers Association is made possible, in part, by the gracious support of the Farhang Foundation

OJAI CHATS at Libbey Park Gazebo, 11:30am: Nina Barzegar and Nasim Khorassani

There is no intermission during the concert

Friday, June 9, 2023 | 10:00am

Libbey Bowl

VIS-À-VIS

Gloria Cheng piano | Emi Ferguson flute | Mario Gotoh viola | Leonard Hayes piano | Karen Ouzounian cello

Joshua Rubin clarinet | Steven Schick percussion | Michi Wiancko violin | Wu Man pipa

Shawn OKPEBHOLO mi sueño: afro-flamenco

Tyson Gholston DAVIS American Tableau (Tableau XI)

Margaret BONDS

Michael ABELS

Troubled Water (Wade in the Water from Spirituals Suite)

Iconoclasm

Leonard Hayes piano

Jessie MONTGOMERY Rhapsody No. 2

Michi Wiancko violin

Nasim KHORASSANI Growth

Michi Wiancko violin | Mario Gotoh viola | Karen Ouzounian cello

Nina BARZEGAR

Inexorable Passage

Emi Ferguson flute | Joshua Rubin clarinet | Michi Wiancko violin

Karen Ouzounian cello | Gloria Cheng piano

Lei LIANG vis-à-vis

Wu Man pipa | Steven Schick percussion

Shawn OKPEBHOLO (b. 1981) mi sueño: afro-flamenco (2021)

Tyson Gholston DAVIS (b. 2000)

American Tableau (Tableau XI) (2021)

Margaret BONDS (1913-72)

Troubled Water (Wade in the Water) (c. 1930s-40s)