Sorrow (2018)

Just after I graduated with a master’s in composition from the University of Tehran, my professor, Dr. Sara Abazari, who was still teaching there at the time, invited the Zarvan Ensemble to collaborate on an artistic project. I was lucky enough to be invited to write a piece alongside her current students. Ultimately, this collaboration didn’t happen, and the Horizonte Ensemble was invited instead.

The initial ideas for the piece “Sorrow” came to me while I was reading Nima Yooshij’s poem, “Mahtab” (means moonlight). My decision was to write a piece inspired by the concept of Sorrow (Alas!) . The creation process was mostly intuitive and done while improvising on the piano. The sudden silences within the piece are, for me, reminiscent of a feeling of sorrow; that moment when you think you’ve achieved something, only to have the ruins of failure fall upon you:

… The delicate form of the stem of a flower, 

which I planted with my soul, 

and gave water with my soul, 

Alas! It breaks in my arms …

At the time, this was my first piece for an ensemble that was performed.