Houbara - Resonanzen Iran #2

Cymin Samawatie Trio | Pouya Ehsaie & Tara Fatehi | Padideh Naderi & Rouzbeh Motia

The 2-day festival Houbara - Resonances Iran sees itself as a place of exchange, new encounters and shared experiences. The festival is dedicated to artists:inside and ensembles that question genre boundaries and thereby create and explore their own sound worlds. One focus - in addition to multi-layered music - is on Persian poetry, which has not only been part of world literature for centuries, but is also an important part of Iranian cultures in everyday life. Houbara is curated by Sophie Emilie Beha, NICA artist 2022.

Tuesday program:
7pm Yalda Yazdani: Female Singers in Post-Revolutionary Iran (Lecture)
8pm Cymin Samawatie Trio
9pm From the Lips to the Moon with Pouya Ehsaie and Tara Fatehi
10pm Padideh Naderi & Rouzbeh Motia

Programm 6th March

The Houbara is an Iranian endemic migratory bird that is in danger of extinction. The title also refers to "The Conference of Birds" (منطق الطیر) by Fariduddin Attar - a great mystical poem that is one of the most important works of Persian literature. It describes the pilgrimage of thousands of birds of the world in search of an ideal king. In the end, thirty birds remain - and realize that they themselves are the king they are looking for.

In collaboration with NICA artist development, Timcheh e.V. and Yalda Yazdani.

Yalda Yazdani: Female Singers in Post-Revolutionary Iran (Lecture)
For more on this event, please visit https://stadtgarten.de/programm/yalda-yazdani-female-singers-in-postrevolutionary-iran-lecture-6717

Cymin Samawatie Trio
Persian poetry and chamber contemporary music in a trio line-up performing for the first time.
East and West, old and new, in seamless synthesis. In the compositions of Cymin Samawatie, the timbres of impressionism merge with the liveliness of contemporary jazz. She combines new compositional structures with chamber music, free improvisations and minimalism with Persian poetry by Rumi, Hafis & Forough Farrokhzaad. Sensual and delicate, the musicians shape their sounds and conjure up free melodies and rhythms that immediately captivate you. The warm, expressive and clear voice of Samawatie interweaves and becomes one with the impressionistic sounds of the instruments. Forough Farrokhzaad's poems sound dynamic and expressive, as do expansive melodies that suggest you have heard them before: for they tell of eternal truths and the depth of human creativity.

From the Lips to the Moon with Pouya Ehsaie and Tara Fatehi.

FTLTTM are Pouya Ehsaei, Iranian musician and organizer, and Tara Fatehi, an Iranian writer, interdisciplinary artist and performer. The duo seeks to collaborate with musician:s and poet:s from marginalized communities who identify as PoC (Person/People of Color) and/or LGBT*QIA+.
The sound structure of FTLTTM is defined by contemporary electronic music played by Pouya Ehsaei on his modular synthesizer. Traditional musician:s from different ethnic and musical communities add familiar musical patterns, creating a soundscape that is both old and new.
The mood for the lyrics is created by Tara through spoken word performances, in which she brings together her experience of performance and writing to create a lively textual environment that constantly jumps between poetry, lyrics, snippets of news, different languages, collected dialogues, and the singing of Western and Iranian songs. The poets invited to FTLTTM shows speak about their life experiences and the conflicts and challenges they face as migrant, queer, or otherwise underrepresented and marginalized creatives.

Padideh Naderi & Rouzbeh Motia

Singer Padideh Naderi has traveled especially from Iran for this concert. The first musical encounter between her and Cologne-based santur player Rouzbeh Motia is dedicated to traditional Persian playing styles - various forms of Dastgāh music. The term Dastgāh refers to a position of the hand on an instrument, creating a particular mode, a way of sounding the notes together. The melodies of Motia's santoor and Naderi's warmly clear voice play around each other and alternate in their voicings. Padideh Naderi and Rouzbeh Motia present a varied and dazzling program full of poetry, virtuosity, improvisation, free and fixed meters, swirling tempos and heartrending ballads.

Padideh Naderi.
At the age of ten, encouraged by her art-loving family, Padideh Naderi began playing the santoor and performed as a musician and singer in ensembles such as the traditional orchestra of Master Hasan Kianinejad and the Mehr National Orchestra. Naderi learned from masters such as Sediq Tarif, Peyman Soltani, Hengameh Akhavan and Mohsen Keramati. She is a member of Peyman Soltani's ensemble and manager of international affairs at the Center for Music Diplomacy.

Rouzbeh Motia.
Rouzbeh Motia was born in 1978 in Iran, where he also grew up and became passionate about music at an early age: his father played the violin and his uncle played the santoor. At the age of 12, Rouzbeh Motia took lessons with master Farāmarz Pāyvar. He pursued his musical interest academically, earning his bachelor's and master's degrees, both at Tehran University of the Arts, where he specialized in traditional Iranian music. He then studied European music in Paris and completed his PhD at the University of Cologne on Iranian Dastgāh music, among other topics. Since 2015, he has been teaching classical Iranian music as a guest lecturer at the University of Cologne. Rouzbeh Motia has given numerous solo concerts in France and Germany, has performed with various ensembles, and has released several albums.