LOVE, CRYSTAL AND STONE

composed by ASHKAN BEHZADI performed by TAK ENSEMBLE

Ashkan Behzadi’s Love, Crystal and Stone stretches musical lyricism to its limit, imagining an impossibly radical, revolutionary folk music that pushes the individual and collective virtuosity of TAK ensemble to new heights.

This concert length work is a sensual, intricately interwoven, and deeply philosophical setting of the poetry of Federico García Lorca. The book features Ahmad Shamlou’s farsi translations and reimaginings of Lorca’s poetry and the ecstatically macabre paintings of Mehrdad Jafari bringing together bold visual gestures and elemental icons evoking birds, rivers, fear, ecstasy, and exaltation.

List of Movements:

I: Deseo

II: Romance de la luna luna

III: La balada del agua del mar

• Love, Crystal and Stone exists as an album/book, released on TAK editions in 2022 •

with poetry by FEDERICO GARCÍA LORCA and translations by AHMAD SHAMLOU

artwork by MEHRDAD JAFARI and writing by SAHARNAZ SAMAEINEJAD

designed by SONNENZIMMER

The physical release weaves together the magical imagery and philosophical backdrop of Behzadi’s composition, taking the form of a beautifully constructed art book.  The book, designed by Chicago-based graphic art studio Sonnenzimmer, creates an over-arching intermedia dialogue in three languages that enhances and elaborates upon Behzadi’s music. This material companion to the album weaves together Lorca’s poetry in Spanish side by side with Shamlou’s Farsi translations, paintings by Mehrdad Jafari, and both commentary and historically-informed imaginary letters in English written by cultural theorist Saharnaz Samaeinejad. 

COLLABORATORS:

ASHKAN BEHZADI:

Ashkan Behzadi: is an Iranian–Canadian composer. He earned his DMA in composition at Columbia University. The issue of genre-identity or genre-blurring, and the dialectical relationship between modernist lyric poetry and contemporary music have formed the core of Ashkan’s aesthetic concerns. Structurally, by demonstrating great attention to details, his music conveys a miniaturist and gentle lyrical landscape. As a 2021-2022 Guggenheim Fellow, Ashkan Behzadi currently works on a large-scale music-theater project on a collection of poems by Federico García Lorca.

SAHARNAZ SAMAEINEJAD:

Saharnaz Samaeinejad is a Joseph Bombardier CGS doctoral fellow at the University of Toronto’s Centre for Comparative Literature. She works at the intersection of Marxist political philosophy, materialist-dialectical aesthetics, and lyrical responses to modernity, with a special focus on the history and politics of Persian poetic modernism during the early-to-mid twentieth century Iran. Her dissertation explores the dialectical link between poetic creativity and critical capacity/dialectics in the lyrical oeuvre of Furūgh Farrukhzād. She received her B.A. in Sociology from Tehran University, and her M.A. in Individualized Studies from NYU.

MEHRDAD JAFARI:

Mehrdad Jafari is a graduate of Shiraz University with a BA in Handicrafts in 2008. Jafari translates the loss of reflection in humans into his mostly morbid illustrations. In his work, anthropomorphic creatures consume themselves and others in eerie yet sensual compositions. One can see these collections of drawings and objects as his diaries; everything that Jafari encounters is translated into an illustrative style wherein anthropomorphic figures play the main characters, at times even the artist himself portrayed.

SONNENZIMMER:

Sonnenzimmer (est. 2006) is the collaborative practice of artists Nick Butcher (b. 1980) and Nadine Nakanishi (b. 1976). Their work investigates and challenges the preconceived notions of the graphic arts. Their experimental studio was established in 2006 in Chicago. Together, they explore the physical and psycho-physical nature of visualization through image-making, sculpture, writing, publishing, exhibitions, design, music, and performance. While they move through an array of media, their focus is on triangulating a deeper understanding of graphic expression at large.

Regarded as “one of the most prominent ensembles in the United States practicing truly experimental music” (I Care If You Listen), TAK delivers energetic performances "that combine crystalline clarity with the disorienting turbulence of a sonic vortex.” (WIRE Magazine). The ensemble “impresses with the organicity of their sound, their dynamism and virtuosity” (New Sounds, WQXR). Dedicated to the commissioning of new works and direct collaboration with composers and other artists, TAK promotes ambitious programming at the highest level, fostering engagement within and outside of the music community.