Aftaab Meeshavad
Ensemble Dal Niente with funds provided by the Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation in 2024
Ensemble Dal Niente, with soprano Carrie Henneman Shaw, conducted by Michael Lewanski, at Frequency Festival, Constellation, 3111 N. Western Avenue, Chicago, USA, 23rd February 2025
This work is both a tribute to the Iranian poet Forugh Farrokzad and to Ensemble Dal Niente, who commissioned the work.
Ensemble Dal niente has been championing my music since covid hit the planet and Aftaab Meeshavad (The Sun rises), is bringing us to work face to face for the first time.
I completed the work in early January 2025, soon after what would have been the poet’s ninetieth birthday in December 2024.
The musical setting brings to the forefront the sorrow and delicate sensual sensitivity intrinsic in her poetry as well as the anger towards a regime which was repressive towards women in her country during her life time.
For the creation of this score I have set a selection of stanzas of the poem with the same title.
This is the first time I set music in a language I didn’t know anything at all. I got to know the poetry by Farrokzad several years ago and immediately became an inspiration to me personally and for the first libretto I ever wrote during lockdown, for an opera project which I hope will take off in the next few years.
Aftaab Meeshavad, was commissioned with funds provided by the Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation in 2024 and it is dedicated to Brian Ferneyhough.