Shadi Fathi & Bijan Chemirani

DELÂSHENA

PRESS BOOK

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Album published on 18 mai 2018 by buda musiquedistribution : socadisc

MCE Productions 5 rue Méolan 13001 Marseille France / 00 33 4 91 37 86 89

www.mceproductions.org / www.delashena.com

Artistic direction and arrangements : Shadi Fathi & Bijan Chemirani

14 titles (50’18)

Shadi Fathi : setâr, shourangiz, voix (#1 et #14), daf (#9 et#11)Bijan Chemirani : zard, daf, udu, percussion, saz (#1)Sêtar and shourangiz played on this disc were created by Hossein Cheraghi

Album recorded in January 2018 at the Durance Theater studio(Château-Arnoux) and Studio Nerves (Salon de Provence) by Fred Braye and Jean-Michel Bouillot.

Mixage > Fred Braye - Studio La Limite (Bruxelles)Mastering > Raphaël JoninAdvice to the realization > Bruno Allary

Pictures > Muriel DespiauCalligraphy > Shabnam BarakiArtwork > Johann Hierholzer

A CD produced by MCE Productionswith the support of Conseil Régional Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur and Fonds pour la Création MusicaleDirection of production : Claire Leray assisted by Marianne Larcheron, Virginie Larrat and Anne Berron

Musical cultures sometimes take on unknown brilliance far from their source of nourishment. The meeting in Marseille in 2016 between Shadi Fathi and Bijan Chemirani is part of this kind of precious spark, a setting in fertile dialogue on the peaks of Persian music. Born in Tehran, Shadi Fathi trained with Ostad Dariush Talai, grand mas-ter of Persian learned music, before becoming an exceptional soloist with his virtuosity in setar and shourangiz, traditional string instruments. Bijan Chemirani has become a reference for zarb, an ancestral percussion Iranian, alongside his father but also over multiple projects from France.

The duo presents today his first album, where classical inspirations and contemporary flashes are mixed in a rhythmic abundance conducive to improvisations, enlightened by readings of Persian poems, from Mowlana Rumi to Sohrab Sepehri. A delicate conversation led with a sublime mastery.

Practical information >Album published on May 18, 2018 by Buda Musique - Distribution Socadisc

www.delashena.com

Le souffle de lumière, le tremblement concentréqui émane de certaines rencontres

contredit parfois sa propre brièvetéet s’étend comme une lente alchimie

sur tout le reste de la vie.

Posséder ainsi pour toujoursquelque chose que l’on n’eut jamais

et que l’on n’aura jamais,change la condition de l’homme,

modifie ses limites.

Les mains se touchent parfoiset parfois n’y parviennent pas.

Mais les yeux se touchentou quelque chose qui est derrière les yeux.

Mais posséder ainsi, toucher ainsi,réduit encore un coin d’éternité

et le fait tenir dans la cellule que nous occupons.

C’est peut-être là qu’est la sagesse de l’amour,sauvée des incendies qui le dévastent.

D’après un extrait de la Douxième poésie verticale de Roberto Juarroz

A conversation at the apogee of Persian music

At the outer edges of Persian music, beyond the canonical repertoires so patiently inculcated and eruditely taught, the musical conversation between Shadi Fathi and Bijan Chemirani sparks a dialogue with classical inspirations and contemporary flashes. A paragon of rhythmic flourishes and fertile improvisations.

This first album plunges the listener into an intimate and disconcerting universe. Disconcerting like these regions that we think we know but that we are constantly rediscovering. To go there is to accept to abandon oneself and to resign oneself to unanswerable questions: to accept the guidance of that disturbing perception of a territory at once familiar and unknown. A sonic landscape that “only the heart recognizes”. Literally: Delâshena…

This creation darts about like a poetic journey through the history and geography of an imaginary land, a Hitchestan, country without name and without history, title incipit of the album where the aerial voice of Shadi and Bijan’s percussions are tamed, where the strings of the sarar and the saz are delicately woven. The aphorisms of the contemporary Iranian poet Sohrab Sepehri settle there and resound like words of welcome…

Delâshena unfolds in 14 musical pieces mapping the emotions of this unique territory. In a literary echo to Persian mysticism, we wander through flowered gardens of the soul in the titles Golnoush or Golafshân. We cross great open spaces in Azadi, we embrace the festive celebrations of Yalda (the birth of the Sun), we celebrate the seasons with Rang-eBahâr (Colours of Spring) or the traditions of Shâbâsh (the gift of money during holidays ). Delâshena unfolds in 14 musical pieces mapping the emotions of this unique territory. In a literary echo to Persian mysticism, we wander through flowered gardens of the soul in the titles Golnoush or Golafshân. We cross great open spaces in Azadi, we embrace the festive celebrations of Yalda (the birth of the Sun), we celebrate the seasons with Rang-eBahâr (Colours of Spring) or the traditions of Shâbâsh (the gift of money during holidays).

Flirting with boundaries, playing with the codes of classical Persian music, the duo bewitches laymen and surprises purists. Rolling out, for example, a shourangiz solo by Shadi on Maqâm-e Saba, in a style — Saba — which is not Iranian at all, having its origins in Ottoman and Arabic music. Then running on to Khorasan — named after a historic region of North-Eastern Iran — quintuple-time rhythms, typical of this region… Disoriented variations, wandering and freed from canonical rigidity, not in a challenging way but, on the contrary, in a respectful tribute to these secular traditions.

Delâshena, what the heart recognizes, naturally encounters the rocky peaks of love. In the beloved face (Tchéhreyé Djân), in the shared or the neighbouring (Hamsâyeh) and in its sinuous accession, as in the final Nemidâmam, picking up on the Sufi poetry of Jalâl ad-Din Rûmî recited by Shadi and transcended by Bijan’s percussive phrasings with mesmerizing evocative power.

Delâshena is the cross between the compositions of two artists with very different backgrounds, a hybridization that is rooted in classical Persian music but which follows its own course to irrigate unexplored lands. This flow of ineffable melodies and whirling rhythms indicates a complicity between the two musicians that can not be invented. Bigger than the two of them, this complicity becomes an independent entity. Like an invisible heritage.

Perhaps this is because Shadi’s great master, Ostad Dariush Talai, played with Bijan’s father, Djamchid Chemirani, in memorable concerts in the 1970s. Perhaps this transcendent heritagehas continued despite the distance between Iran and France. Perhaps Shadi and Bijan are the beneficiaries of this encounter. Perhaps Delâshena is all that: everything that the heart recognizes, this elusive poetry, without time, without continent…

Shadi FathiBiography

Virtuoso of the Set’r, long-necked lute, Shadi Fathi perpetuates the ancient heritage of classical

Persian music with a long-time concert experience (she made her first solo appearance in 1992 at

the age of 15) and a brilliant sense of improvisation. Disciple of the great master Dariush Talaï in

Tehran, she also masters traditional stringed instruments such as the Tatr or the Shourangiz and

dazzles with her sensitivity on digital percussion such as the zarb or more particularly the daf,

with a playing style following the tradition of the Ghâderiyeh Brotherhood of Iranian Kurdistan.

Based in France since 2002 and returning regularly to Iran, she is an artist who celebrates a

musicality rich with European and Mediterranean aesthetics, collaborating frequently on disc and

on stage (600 performances since 2009) and nourishing her imagination with the language of the

Persian poet Hafez or that of the contemporary Argentinian Roberto Juarroz as much as with the

writings of the Iranian filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami or those of the French painter Henri Matisse.

With these tutelary inspirations, she weaves a tenuous thread which lays bare beauty with a

stroke, a word, a look or a note, and contains in infinite detail the power of universality. Her music

navigates those living sources that, according to Sufi poetry, show us the world in a drop of water.

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Bijan Chemirani Biography

Extending an illustrious family line, Bijan Chemirani was initiated in the delicate handling

of the ancestral Iranian zarb by his father Djamchid, a true institution and custodian of the

oral tradition of Persian music, and his brother Keyvan, with whom he forms the prestigious

Chemirani Trio. Born in France, the youngest of the family has over the years earned his

laurels as master of the tombak — the other name of zarb — before opening up new

approaches to Persian percussion by bringing his polyrhythms into Mediterranean repertoires.

Through working together with Ross Daly, Socrates Sinopoulos, Renaud Garcia Fons, Stelios

Petrakis, Juan Carmona, Amina Alaoui, and with the Oneira or Fora Bandit collectives, he

has enriched his musical universe by taming the resonances of the bendir and riqq but also

the refined melodies of traditional string instruments such as tas, saz or kamânche. And his

insatiable curiosity multiplied by an insatiable openness to the world has pushed him much

further, into eclectic adventures with the cellist Jean Guihen Queyras, the American jazzman

Chico Freeman, the rock guitarist Serge Teyssot-Gay and even the English pop star Sting. An

extraordinary journey for an artist shaped by rhythmic explorations and poetic itineraries.

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www.delashena.com

1er juin 2018 ● 20h30 ● Cité de la musique (Marseille)

2 juin 2018 ● 21h00 ● L’Église Haute (Banon)

16 juillet 2018 ● 17h30 ● Festival Là c’est de la musique (Avignon)

10 NOVEMBRE 2018 ● 18h00 ● (Le Revest-les-brousses)

7 décembre 2018 ● 20H30 ● L’éolienne (Marseille)

9 décembre 2018 ● 17H30 ● Auditorium Jean moulin (Le Thor)

On Tour 2018

BOOKING & LOCAL PRESS > Marianne LARCHERONMCE Productions

diffusion@mceproductions.org+33 (0)4 91 37 86 89

www.mceproductions.org

NATIONAL PRESS > Sèverine BERGERVeev Com for Buda Musique

severine@veevcom.com+33 (0)6 77 83 62 39

www.budamusique.com

Contacts