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La voix de Perse

70 ans du compositeur Perse Reza Vali 2 et 3 juillet Cette année pour célébrer les 70 ans du compositeur persan Reza Vali, “DU VERT à l’INFINITE” invite dix musiciens et compositeurs, iraniens mais aussi internationaux. Au programme du festival, nous présentons une sélection de compositions créées par Reza Vali, Christophe Rezaï et Shahab Paranj et un concert de musique traditionnelle persane et contemporaine. Présenté par de grands maîtres de la musique persane et des compositeurs contemporains, ce concert soulignera la relation possible entre deux univers hétérogènes. Hamid Taghavi à Santour, Khosrow Soltani à Ney et Sorna et Mohammad Ghavihelm à Tombak vous proposeront leurs propres improvisations de musique traditionnelle et de compositions contemporaines, un mélange qui d’avance s’annonce subtil. 

Juillet 2, 20h Musee Baron Martin
Juillet 3, 20h Église Lavoncort




 

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Reza Vali

Reza Vali was born in Ghazvin, Persia (Iran), in 1952. He began his music studies at the Conservatory of Music in Tehran. In 1972 he went to Austria and studied music education and composition at the Academy of Music in Vienna.

After graduating from the Academy of Music, he moved to the United States and continued his studies at the University of Pittsburgh, receiving his Ph.D. in music theory and composition in 1985. Mr. Vali has been a faculty member of the School of Music at Carnegie Mellon University since 1988.

He has received numerous honors and commissions, including the honor prize of the Austrian Ministry of Arts and Sciences, two Andrew W. Mellon Fellowships, commissions from the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, the Boston Modern Orchestra Project, the Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble, Kronos Quartet, the Carpe Diem String Quartet, the Seattle Chamber Players, and the Arizona Friends of Chamber Music, as well as grants from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, The Pittsburgh Foundation, and the Pittsburgh Board of Public Education.

He was selected by the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust as the Outstanding Emerging Artist for which he received the Creative Achievement Award. Vali's orchestral compositions have been performed in the United States by the Pittsburgh Symphony, the Seattle Symphony, the Boston Modern Orchestra Project, the Baltimore Symphony, the Memphis Symphony Orchestra, and Orchestra 2001.

His chamber works have received performances by Cuarteto Latinoamericano, the Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble, the Carpe Diem String Quartet, Kronos Quartet, the Seattle Chamber Players, and the Da Capo Chamber Players. His music has been performed in Europe, China, Chile, Mexico, Hong Kong, and Australia and is recorded on the Deutsche Grammophon, Naxos, New Albion, MMC, Ambassador, Albany, and ABC Classics labels.

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Christophe Rezaï

Hamid Taghavi

Christophe Rezaï, born in France in 1966, is a French-Persian composer and musician living in Iran and focused on fusion music between Persian and Western music. He also approaches different style of music.

Since 1994 he works on several music fields: As a composer for film (full & short length, French or Iranian films) working with directors as Dariush Mehrjui, Mani Haghighi or Shahram Mokri, documentaries (Our summer in Tehran directed by Justine Shapiro, 2010), theater (Ali Rafii), TV advertising (BBC Persian) and his own music (albums released with hermes Records, and MiM Records his own label). He granted 9 best movie score's prizes.

As a musician, he founded several music ensembles like, in 2000, NOUR Ensemble with 9 French & Persian singers and instrumentalists. This ensemble has given many concerts in Europe or Asia (Fes Sacred Music Festival, "Les orientales" Festival, Festival de Musique Baroque de Pontoise) & has been broadcasted by MEZZO TV Channel & France Musique and released his first album, “Alba” in 2005.

Praised for his virtuosity and unique style, Hamid Taghavi is an Persian-American Santur player who is greatly influenced by the great masters Parviz Meshkatian and Ardavan Kamkar. Born in Ahar, he began his musical studies at the age of six under the tutelage of Mr. Ebrahim Safari and Dr. Ahad Behjat. Mr. Taghavi was named the Best Santur Player at the age of sixteen; at eighteen, he founded the Arasbaran Ensemble, which quickly gained fame and toured the country. The ensemble was awarded the title of the “Best Ensemble” in the Fadje Music Festival.
Taghavi continued studying the Persian classical repertoire (Radif) with master Meshkatian but after being deeply inspired by the musicality and contemporary style for Santur presented by Ardavan Kamkar, he began his new musical journey with him for a decade while studying composition with Mohammad-Reza Darvishi. In 1999, he was invited by the Pournazerie family as a co-founder to re-establish the renowned Iranian ensemble, Shams Ensemble. He contributed to Shams Ensemble as a soloist composer and manager touring internationally. Mr. Taghavi can be heard on numerous recording albums and has collaborated with famed vocalists and Persian music legends such as Alireza Eftekhari, Hamid Noorbakhsh, Homayoun Shajariyan, and many great artists of this generation. After moving to California, he was commissioned by Oakland Pacific Choral Orchestra to create a work for Santur and the choir which exceeded all expectations and was well received by the audience. Hamid’s recent focus is on developing and promoting Santur internationally by producing solo album recordings and in collaboration with international musicians.

Khosow Soltani

Khosrow Soltani was born in Tehran, and has been living in Austria since 1974. He studied in Tehran's conservatory and finished his degree as a bassoonist in 1971. From 1971 and 1974 he played bassoon as a regular member of the Teheran Symphony Orchestra. In October 1974 he began his bassoon studies at the Hochschule fuer Musik und Darstellende Kunst in Vienna, Austria, with Karl Oelberger. Three years later, he finished his degree with honors. Since 1976 he has been a member of the Viennese ensemble of early music Les Menestrels. He has also recorded and toured the United States and Canada with the Clemencic Consort and Musica Antiqua Wien. On the recorder, he studied with Hans Maria Kneihs, finishing his degree in 1984.
In the early 1980s, Soltani co-founded the Shiraz Ensemble in Vienna to preserve and promote Persian classical music in Europe.

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Mohammad Ghavi-Helm

Persian percussionist Mohamad Ghavihelm has had an illustrious music career that spans over fifty years of academic experience and live performances with renowned musicians around the world. He studied percussion in the Music Conservatory of Tehran and moved to Paris in 1973 where he continued his training under the supervision of Sylvio Gualda, the renowned French percussionist and conductor. He continued his academic endeavors as an Arts Master in several French conservatories and became the director of the Luce Conservatory until he retired in 2017.

Ghavi-Helm collaborated with Yo-Yo Ma in the Silk Road Ensemble and the Lyons national orchestra and worked closely with the Italian composer Luigi Ceccarelli. Starting in the 1980s he partnered with the great legendery master of tar and setar instruments M.R. Lotfi and together they brought a new chapter in the history of Persian traditional music. Over a span of close to thirty years, they performed live improvised. 

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Sahba Khalili Amiri

Sahba Khalili Amiri was born in Tehran and grew up with traditional Persian music. She studied opera singing with Anna Venturi, a mezzo-soprano of the Carlo Felice Theatre in Genoa. In 2020 she received her diploma in Vocal Chamber Music at the Milan Conservatory, under the guidance of

Daniela Uccello. Her repertoire ranges from baroque, and bel canto to the romantic and contemporary periods.

In 2017 she performed in a selection of Italian operas at the Rodaki Theatre in Tehran as well as works on Shakespeare's plays at the Costigliole d'Asti theatre. Since 2020 she has been attending the advanced specialization course in contemporary singing at the International Divertimento Ensemble Academy with Alda Caiello in Milan and since 2018 she has participated for four consecutive years in the "Teatro di Voce" project curated by Laura Catrani for the Milano Musica Festival.

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Shahab Paranj

Persian composer, and Instrumentalist Shahab Paranj, based in Los Angeles,

holds degrees in music composition from the San Francisco Conservatory of Music,

Manhattan School of Music, and the University of California, Los Angeles. He is 

considered as one of the pioneers among his generation of composers whose composition style integrates Persian and Western composition techniques. 

Known as a tombak virtuoso, he has performed, recorded, and collaborated with numerous highly-respected artists worldwide. Acclaimed by the San Francisco Examiner as “impressive” and by composer John Adams as “unique,” Paranj blends Persian rhythmic and melodic influences with Western texture and form in his composition. 

Recent commissions include works for ensembles such as the Russian String Orchestra, Intersection Contemporary Music Ensemble, Long Beach Opera, Aleron Trio, San Francisco New Music Ensemble, One Great City Duo, MSM symphony orchestra, and International Low Brass Trio. He has written an original score for the movie “Dressage,” the winner of the 2018 feature film (generation category) in the Berlin Film Festiva.

He has received formal recognition from the Mehr Humanitarian Society (2010) and

the City and County of San Francisco (2011)

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Katarina Leskovar

Katarina Leskovar is performing internationally as a soloist, chamber and orchestra musician and is a recipient of various international prizes. She is a performer that is constantly seeking parallels between old and new, past and present and is therefore working across a diverse array of musical branches. She has performed at the festivals including Warsaw Autumn, Klangspuren Festival, Davos Festival, Carinthischer Sommer, Festival Ljubljana, Kammermusikfestival Hohenstaufen in Beethoven-Haus Bonn, Musikverein and Konzerthaus Vienna, Alte Oper Frankfurt, Semperoper Dresden, Cité Internationale des Arts Paris and The Concertgebouw Amsterdam. In 2019 she undertook an internship with Basel Sinfonietta. Katarina has premiered pieces by Beat Furrer, Judit Varga, Uroš Rojko and many others. She has also been a member of the Gustav Mahler Jugendorchester with concerts conducted by Herbert Blomstedt, Jonathan Nott and Christian Thielemann as part of the joint project with Staatskapelle Dresden. Katarina performed as a soloist with the RTV Slovenia Symphony Orchestra and participated in masterclasses with Heinz Holliger, members of Ensemble Modern, Ivry Gitlis, Wolfgang Emanuel Schmidt, Torleif Thedeen, Wen-Sinn Yang and others. She is a student at the Hochschule für Musik Basel where she finished the Master of Performance in the class of Danjulo Ishizaka and is now finishing her second master studies specializing in contemporary chamber music with the ensemble zone expérimentale. 

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Ava Shadmani

Ava Shadmani earned her Doctor of Musical Arts in Violin Performance from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2021. She studied with David Perry of the Pro Arte Quartet and was awarded a fellowship in UW’s prestigious graduate string quartet, the Rabin String Quartet. She is currently pursuing an Artist Diploma at The Glenn Gould School of The Royal Conservatory in Toronto, where she studies with the renowned violin pedagogue, Paul Kantor. She is a recipient of the Arlene Nimmons Pach Scholarship, The Women's Art Association of Canada - Nancy Roberts McCulloch Scholarship, The David G. Powrie Scholarships and The Reinhold Scholarship Bursary. Ava began playing violin at the age of 11 in Tehran, Iran. She moved to the United States in summer of 2016 for he Masters studies in Violin Performance at the University of Maryland and was honored to be a recipient of their prestigious Smith Scholarship. She holds a Bachelor of Music in violin performance from the University of Tehran. Ava is a versatile solo and chamber musician and has performed various concerts in her country, as well as Europe, and the United States. She is a former violinist of the Arvand String Quartet, an active chamber ensemble that has appeared in several performances and recordings with the goal of bringing classical music into more accessible venues in Iran. As an Iranian woman with a deep passion for Persian culture and music, she has appeared in multiple concerts and projects performing works by Iranian composers. Recently she was awarded the David and Edith Sinaiko Frank fellowship for a Woman in the Arts for her project “Unheard Voices of Iran” in the United States. This project introduces five folk-inspired compositions by Iranian composers and it consists of two parts: live performances and professional recording of both premieres and commissioned pieces with the goal of fostering an understanding of two cultures seemingly impossibly divided, East to West, Ancient to Modern. The result of this project will be released as an album.

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Kami Ghavi-Helm

Kami was born in France to a family of musicians. After studying violin in Paris with Alexandre Brussilovsky and graduating from pre-college with honors, he completed a Bachelor of Music in violin performance with Zygmund Kowalski at the Royal Conservatory of Brussels and graduated with honors while pursuing harmony classes under Jean-Baptiste Robin at the Versailles Conservatory. Kami then moved to the United States to continue his studies with Cyrus Forough at Carnegie Mellon University, where he got a Master of Music and an Advanced Musical Studies diploma. He recently completed his coursework requirements as a Doctorate of Musical Arts candidate at Rice University – The Shepherd School of Music in Cho-Liang Lin’s studio.
Kami was the recipient to the prestigious Anne and Charles Duncan Concertmaster Chair and the Dorothy Richard Starling Foundation scholarships and was also awarded Rice University’s Malcolm W. Perkins Teaching Fellowship. 
As a performer, Kami has taken part in many group formations such as being a soloist with an orchestra, a tutti player or a chamber player. Performing extensively in Europe and America allowed him to extend his cultural knowledge and try many different approaches to music, such as improvisation and traditional music. His global experience has also fostered a strong command of Western classical repertoire ranging from the Baroque era to contemporary pieces.
Kami recently received an award from the French embassy for his idea to create a 90-minute lecture video on French music that draws a parallel between the music performed and other mediums such as poetry and visual arts by linking each musical piece to a poem or painting from the same era or on the same subject. 
Kami is currently working on his doctoral thesis focusing on traditional Persian music, a subject of interest to him due to his origins. His paper will also include an original composition for solo violin, which will blend Persian and Western-music elements. This research will lead to a YouTube series on Persian music in an attempt to make the rich Persian culture more accessible to a worldwide audience. 
He is currently collaborating with Houston-based French painter Agnes Bourely for the creation of an art exhibition blending pictorial and musical elements, for which he will compose and perform pieces influenced by her abstract paintings.
Kami is also very interested in the pedagogical aspect of music. He has been teaching violin and theory for the past ten years, privately and in partnership with many institutions. His pedagogical approach has been praised in several newsletters. He enjoys sharing his passion with others to help a new generation of musicians blossom.

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Damon Taheri

Swedish-Persian violist Damon Taheri has been praised for his sensitive yet

energetic playing style and for being a multifaceted musician. He has worked

with some of the best orchestras in Scandinavia (Oslo Philharmonic, Royal

Stockholm Philharmonic and Gothenburg Symphony to name a few), and

participated in occasions such as the live broadcast Nobel Peace Prize Concert

and performances for the Royal Family of Norway.

Besides being a sought-after orchestral player, Damon is very passionate about

chamber music, especially the string quartet repertoire. He has been invited to

festivals such as Thy Chamber Music Festival in Denmark, Toronto Summer

Music in Canada, Sarasota Music Festival in Florida and Lake George Music

Festival in New York. During his studies in the US, he had the privilege to study

chamber music with founding members of the Juilliard String Quartet and

American String Quartet, and formed his own award-winning group, the

Chroma Quartet.

Damon has made solo and chamber music appearances at venues like

Stockholm’s Berwald Hall, Boston’s Jordan Hall and Toronto’s Koerner Hall, and

has performed as a soloist with the Norrköping Symphony Orchestra and Arctic

Philharmonic Sinfonietta.

He enjoys playing a variety of different genres and has collaborated with

several artists outside of the classical music scene, including Frank Ocean, Ellie

Goulding, Janelle Monáe and Chick Corea. He is a member of Need Music - a

music production house and artist collective associated with some of Norway’s

leading instrumentalists, vocalists and DJ’s in the popular music scene.

During the pandemic, Damon was determined to make the best out of the

involuntarily free time he got, and focused on preparing for orchestral

auditions. This gave fruitful results, and he was offered a position as Principal

Viola of the Swedish Chamber Orchestra. He also won a job with the Bergen

Philharmonic, and eventually realized that the Norwegian orchestra was a

better fit. He has now been a permanent member of the Bergen Philharmonic

since November 2021.

Damon has a Graduate Diploma in Viola Performance from the New England

Conservatory where he studied with Dimitri Murrath and Jessica Bodner. He

completed his Masters Degree at the Manhattan School of Music under the

tutelage of Karen Ritscher, and has a Bachelors Degree from the Norwegian

Academy of Music with Lars Anders Tomter and Ida Bryhn.

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جشنواره - فستیوال موسیقی از سبز تا بی نهایت - هفتادمین سال تولد رضا والی - شهاب پارنج - کنسرت - سنتور - کوارتت زهی

Lament 
Poème d'Omar Khayam

Toi et moi ignorons les secrets de l’éternité

Et nul ne sait les mots de la combinaison.

Derrière le rideau, est-il question de toi et de moi ?

Au lever de rideau, ni toi ni moi serions dans l’auditoire.

Instruments:
Santoor:
https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santour

Ney:
https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ney_(instrument)

Tombak:
https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tombak

Daf:
https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daf_(instrument)
 

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