MEDIA

" Out the archive: in 2023 Kian Soltani graced our audience in de Doelen with his magnificent cello talent, playing Robert Schumann's 'Cello Concerto' and Reza Vali's 'The Girl from Shiraz'. We sat down with him to hear more about these works and he even gave us a little sneak peek! "
 

Source:  Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra 

 Aug 21, 2024 

 Award-winning composer Reza Vali is a native of Iran but is now based in the United States after studies in Europe. Vali’s distinctive cross-cultural style is founded in a quiet rebellion that saw him return to his Persian musical heritage. Following the dazzling concert opener Ravân, Vali has taken a text by 13th-century poet and mystic, Rūmī, two traditional texts, and words by Vali himself, to create the moving cycle The Being of Love, with each song evoking a different aspect of love. Isfahan uses Persian modes and forms, and is among Vali’s most striking microtonal works, pushing the orchestra beyond its usual twelve-note sound-world in an exciting way.  BUY/LISTEN: https://naxos.lnk.to/8579150ID ***  Listen to Naxos playlists:  Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/user/naxosof...Apple Music: https://apple.co/2LPfG8G  

In Persian with English subtitles (2022)

 Avanegar” is a documentary on the history of music transcription in Iran. In this film, Dr. Mohsen Mohammadi, Iranian scholar and the Director of Indo-Persian Music at UCLA, narrates the history of transcription of Iranian music, based on decades of research in various archives in Iran, Europe, and the United States. In addition, Dr. Reza Vali, professor of composition at Carnegie Mellon University, has arranged exclusively for this film one of his works inspired by Iranian music. This five-movement piece was performed by an ensemble of notable American musicians supervised by the composer.

 Project Director Reza Vali, with Eric Barndollar, developed a computer-driven keyboard instrument that produces the sounds of Persian traditional and folk instruments using the Pythagorean tuning system of Persian and Middle Eastern music. Individual instruments in a digital Western European sound library have been manually retuned according to the interval ratios of the Persian modes and software was developed to automate this process. Future plans include bringing masters of Persian traditional instruments to record samples of the sounds of their instruments for a new sound library, developing accompaniment software, and experimenting with new types of keyboard instruments (such as ergonomic keyboards) and foot pedals, to control the Arghonoon instrument in place of the present style of European keyboard.