A Thousand Butterflies

Description

Aftab Darvishi: a distinctive voice that combines her classical music training with the diverse influences of her native Iran. A Thousand Butterflies is a portrait album that looks back on Darvishi's eleven-year journey as a composer and tells of a life - hers - that has crossed continents. "Each piece on this album tells a part of my life that has taken place in every corner of the world," shares Aftab Darvishi, whose music draws on a wide variety of styles. She presents works for a variety of instruments and electronics on her debut album. "When I compose, I don't think about style," Darvishi says. "It's not that logical, it's not very calculated. It's more by instinct. My music is not just Persian music - it's much more than that: it's an approach to being." Sahar (Dawn) opens Darvishi's album; it is the most recent composition on the recording. Based on a traditional melody from the Kermanshah region, traditionally played at dawn as a morning wake-up call, Aftab Darvishi has written Sahar, a work for cello that uses traditional Persian playing techniques. Originally, this melody was heard on the sorna - later it was also played on the tanbur and mixed with vocals. A live recording of a performance by the Stockholm Saxophone Quartet in Stockholm during the Corona period follows: Hidden Dream is vivid, telling of journeys, hopes, dreams. The following work A Thousand Butterflies, namesake of the album ties in with dreams and hopes: The piece for clarinet and piano is inspired by the experience of immigration, recalling those people who daily leave their homes forever: "In my imagination, thousands of men and women fly toward a better future," Aftab Darvishi says. In each of the three movements, she looks at immigration from a different perspective, conveying to us listeners the diversity of experiences and feelings of immigrants. The earliest composition, Forgetfulness, was recorded in Tehran, as was Sahar, but before she went to the Netherlands to study composition. It has accompanied Aftab Darvishi on her travels ever since and is always a reminder of her origins. The album closes with the atmospheric Plutone.