Post-concert talk
Following the concert
Dampfzentrale Bern
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The music and recovered knowledge of the Persian Safavid dynasty, previously forgotten for centuries, are brought to life by oud virtuoso, Yasamin Shahhosseini in Dârvag. The work is inspired by the poem of the same name by Iranian poet Nima Yooshij, in which there is a longing call for dârvag, a type of frog known in northern Iran, whose song heralds rain. Karen Keyhani has composed a work full of memories, longing and hope.
As the son of an Iranian immigrant to the United States, Daniel Reza Sabzghabaei often asks himself what his late father held on to and let go of along the way. What sounds and memories stayed with him? What recollections comforted him? Sabzghabaei's new work, in the skin, examines cultural memory and more specifically, the debris of memory that immigrants and their children accumulate on their way across oceans and centuries of geographical dispersion.
Lawrence Dunn, on the other hand, manipulates our memory and perception of time in Ash Grove with musical and psychological devices. Based on a Welsh folk song, he creates moments of déjà vu and acoustic illusions that alter and fabricate memories.