Yesterday was a very special day. Taher Adel and I met for the first time to rehearse and bring the music and poetry of Ashkan Behzadi’s Ballads: Oblique together. For this commission (which is part of a set of new works for my current solo project), I paired Ashkan with Taher, a poet and spoken word artist who wrote his series Arabic Names for Home for us. The piece is a conversation between the music and Taher’s poetry, and I am absolutely delighted that Taher will join me on stage for the work's first performance on Monday at the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival.
Hearing it all come together yesterday was a real moment of goosebumps and joy, but also another reminder of the gravity of this work.
Ashkan and Taher both have roots in the Middle East and as this collaboration evolved over the past year, the conflict in Palestine and Israel escalated. The brutality that is taking place cannot and must not be ignored, and the music and words in this piece are coloured heavily by these events. It is dedicated to six Palestinian children who have lost their lives in the current war.
They are:
Hind Rajab (2018-2023)
Omar Al-Baghdadi (2012-2024)
Udai Ma’moun Khaled Abu Al-Heija (2008?-2023)
Salma Jaber (2019-2023)
Zeina Al-Ghoul (2014-2024)
Eileen Al-Athamneh (?-2024)
Ballads: Oblique is full of intensity, sensitivity, anger and beauty, and while I’m really not surprised that Ashkan’s music will be a part of HCMF, I am deeply grateful that the festival has embraced this project and will form the beginning of its journey.
“The title of the piece refers to the relationship between the six ballads for violin and the six verses by Taher Adel on the Arabic names for “home” which are in oblique relation. Throughout the development of this project, the conflict in Palestine escalated, making it no longer possible to think about the notion of “home“—the core idea of this project—without considering the many children who have been deprived not only of a safe space called home during the current senseless war in Palestine but perhaps even of a safe sky to take refuge from the calculated killings. Thus, during the course of the composition, I did not see myself as the composer of the six ballads but as a gatherer of imaginary pieces composed by six Palestinian children killed in Gaza, resisting the urge to view them merely as numbers. I constantly reflect on how it is not just about how many Palestinian children have been killed; it is about how much humanity is deprived of the potential contributions of these souls in the future if they had not been killed in the war. In this sense, I see these pieces as imaginary compositions by these six future composers, had they not been deprived of the one thing we all share-life.” - Ashkan Behzadi
An immense thank you to the Canadian Council for the Arts for funding this commission!
Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival
Monday 18th November at 4.30pm
St Paul's Hall, Huddersfield
Photo credits: Kaveh Kowsari (Ashkan Behzadi), Sam Walton (Marie Schreer), Christopher Hall (Taher Adel)
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