The NuAeen Ensemble comprises four of the world’s most-renowned performers and composers of Persian classical music, all natives of Iran now living in the United States, including Albuquerque’s Sourena Sefati. On Saturday, June 3, to raise awareness of both the ongoing protests in Iran and Persian music, the ensemble will give Albuquerque a rare opportunity to hear that music in its For Freedom Concert at Keller Hall.
Since 2008, Jorge Francisco Castillo, a musician and retired librarian, has presented the Fandango Fronterizo, a celebratory jam session that brings together son jarocho musicians on both sides of the border separating Tijuana and San Diego. The idea is that music creates community despite separation, and son jarocho, a folk music born in Veracruz with a revolutionary pedigree, offers the perfect vehicle. When pianist, composer, band leader, educator, and activist Arturo O’Farrill learned about this annual event, he felt it provided an elegant opportunity to bring together a variety of cultures to make a musical statement of global community in response to the divisive cultural and political currents abroad in the world today. Working with Castillo and his own longtime producer, GRAMMY-winning Kabir Sehgal, O’Farrill brought together his Afro Latin Jazz Orchestra with son jarocho musicians, internationally renowned jazz artists, and musicians from marginalized countries at the 11th annual Fandango. The result is a cornucopia of vibrant musics energized by a common purpose. Continue reading
Cuban pianist Manuel Valera and Iranian santourist Sourena Sefati have each released new albums that live outside the musical mainstream but which are nonetheless quite comfortable inside the ear. Valera’s compositions draw on the theoretical constructs of Russian composer and conductor Nicolas Slonimsky, and Sefati employs ancient Persian elements in his modern compositions. Continue reading
Rahim AlHaj Trio: Issa Malluf, Rahim AlHaj, Sourena Sefati.
Eighteen years ago, Iraqi oud virtuoso/composer Rahim AlHaj, his life threatened by the Saddam regime, which had already imprisoned and tortured him twice, emigrated to the United States with his oud, a few books and paintings, and $60. (A heavy smoker at the time, he claims, with a laugh, to have smoked the $60.) His trouble with the regime had its seeds in the early days of the Iran-Iraq War, when he was just 13 years old. He submitted a composition in Maqam Dasht (an Iraqi scale) to the quadrennial youth competition and won. Because Maqam Dasht is closely related to the Iranian Maqam Āvāz-eDašti, the composition was heard by some as an antiwar statement, a gesture of peace toward Iran. This Saturday, at the Outpost, AlHaj celebrates the release of his latest recording, One Sky* (Smithsonian Folkways), which includes that same composition, enriched by AlHaj’s mature mastery of his instrument. He will be joined by his trio mates on the album: Iranian santur virtuoso Sourena Sefati, and Palestinian-American percussionist Issa Malluf. Continue reading