"The Music of Strangers": A quest for perfect harmony

The Silk Road Ensemble has been a leading force on the cross-cultural world music scene for almost twenty years. A new documentary – ″The Music of Strangers″ – tells the story of the project. 

The Silk Road Ensemble. Courtesy Qantara.

by Marian Brehmer, Qantara.de

The New York Times recently published a list of five outstanding examples of classical music with a political message. One of the pieces featured was "Silent City", a composition by the Iranian knee-violin (kamancheh) virtuoso Kayhan Kalhor, performed in the USA by the Silk Road Ensemble, a group Kalhor has been a member of for 20 years.

From the outset, the Silk Road Ensemble has presented music as a universal, immediately comprehensible language, an idea which for them is no mere platitude. The Ensemble is one of the most highly respected world music combos around and in recent years its musicians have become the exponents par excellence of the power of music to transcend cultural and political borders.

World class musicians

The project was the brainchild of cellist Yo-Yo Ma, whose idea it was to bring together world-class musicians from the great classical music traditions. The documentary "The Music of Strangers" reveals how he succeeded in transforming a diverse group of musicians into a world class ensemble.

Old footage traces the story, from Yo-Yo Ma's earliest performances as a child, to the first concerts by the Silk Road Ensemble. The extensively researched film gives audiences a privileged insight into the inner workings of this exceptional project. It all began in the year 2000, when Yo-Yo Ma invited sixty composers and musicians from the Silk Road countries, the cultural soul of Asia, to Massachusetts in the USA for them get to know one another. The journey that began there could well be described as a "search for perfect harmony" — and highly symbolic at a time when cultural misconceptions are all the rage.

The Line of March

Artist Pouran Jinchi on Inventorying War

Her current exhibition is on view in Dubai through October 21.

Pouran Jinchi, T Morse Code (2016). Courtesy of The Third Line.

by artnet Galleries Team, artnet News

Through quietly formal and exquisitely made work, Iranian artist Pouran Jinchi has assembled a bold exhibition that traces the lasting effects of war on contemporary society. With embroidery, sculpture, and metalwork, she explores military insignias and the pervasive power of symbols and language through her urgently coded messages.

Here, she discusses her current obsessions and how her background has shaped her practice. “The Line of the March” is on view at The Third Line in Dubai now through October 21.

Can you tell us about your process?

My art always begins with an idea, something gets triggered in my mind. I become focused entirely on this particular subject; it’s as though my brain edits out other things. My vision becomes myopic and as I do research on a given subject, I take it all in.

For my latest exhibit, The Line of March, I focused on militarism and I started to see its influence everywhere—online, in fashion, in films. I started to listen to brass bands, marching bands. I noticed the way military terms inflect our slang, how it penetrates popular TV shows, video games, even our food. When I am making art on a particular subject, my brain shuts out all other distractions. The process of making my work is physically demanding since so many details go into my work. I find long walks through NYC are the best form of stretching my body and relaxing my mind.

Go West

Farhad Moshiri, Dubbed ‘the Middle East’s Andy Warhol,’ Gets First Major U.S. Exhibition

A selection of the pop artist’s significant works will be displayed, fittingly, at the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh

Farhad Moshiri, Yipeeee, 2009, private collection, London (Photo by Guillaume Ziccarelli). Courtesy Smithsonian.com.  

by Brigit Katz, Smithsonian.com

The work of Farhad Moshiri is often sparkly, glittery and unabashedly tacky. Inspired by the pop art movement, the Iranian artist has deployed sequins, crystals, beads, keychains and postcards to create vibrant, winking images that explore the quotidian preferences of American and Iranian culture. And so it seems fitting that Moshiri’s first major solo exhibition in the United States will take place in an institution devoted to the king of pop art: the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh.

As Gareth Harris reports for the Art Newspaper, “Farhad Moshiri: Go West” will showcase 33 of the artist’s significant works, many of which are being shown in the United States for the first time. The exhibition will reflect the diversity of Moshiri’s oeuvre, showcasing his embroideries, paintings and sculptures.

Born in 1963 in the city of Shiraz, Moshiri and his family relocated to California in the wake of the Iranian Revolution, according to a 2010 profile by Negar Azimi for The National. Moshiri graduated from the California Institute of the Arts and in 1991, he decided to move back to Iran. He rose to prominence on the Iranian contemporary art scene in the early 2000s, after he premiered a series of large oil paintings of antique ceramics, with Farsi calligraphy superimposed on their cracked surfaces.

“For Moshiri, the use of calligraphy references the pop calligraphy movement of the 1960s, which flourished under Empress Farah Pahlavi,” Elaine W. Ng writes in ArtAsiaPacific magazine.

“Crossing Borders” exhibit touches on immigration issues

Ten artists with diverse backgrounds come together to show their works

Saman Sajasi, "Glory", 2013. Courtesy Periphery Space Gallery.

by Alexander Castro, Providence Journal

Any keys in your pockets? How about loose change? Are you wearing a belt?

You needn’t plunk your belongings in a gray plastic tray to enter “Crossing Borders” — a carefully curated exhibit showing at Periphery Space Gallery in Pawtucket through Oct. 14. But you will have to pass through a metal detector, an experience courtesy of Los Angeles-based Camilo Cruz, who’s installed one of the metallic sentries at the gallery’s entryway.

Cruz joins nine other artists in “Crossing Borders,” a group affair orchestrated by curators Judith Tolnick Champa and Jocelyn Foye. The pair began contemplating and assembling the show nearly eight months ago as an investigation of “dual identities, dual coasts, dual personalities,” according to Foye. With the Trump administration’s recent push to eliminate the DACA program, imperiling thousands of undocumented young adults, Foye sees the venture as an even more timely comment on immigration.

But the show is not a battering ram of polemic. Says Champa: “Hopefully it’s subtle. I think it is.”

The sophistication of the art seems to agree. This is a show you might expect of Providence’s academic galleries and, appropriately enough, the show will travel to Brown University this fall.

Cruz’s spatial cleverness is one instance of several. Mumbai artist Poonam Jain will likely elicit many a double-take, having outfitted a slab of the gallery’s wall with door hardware like deadbolts, locks and coat hooks. Is she keeping something out, or holding the audience captive?

Exclusive Visit to the Studio of Iranian-American Artist Farzad Kohan

Located in the suburbs of Los Angeles, Farzad Kohan’s studio is filled with a mix of interesting fabrics and vibrant paints

Installation view of an artwork by Farzad Kohan. Photography by Stephen O'Bryan. Courtesy Harper's Bazaar Arabia.

by Maymanah Farhat, Harper's Bazaar Arabia

In the courtyard garden that leads to Farzad Kohan’s studio, small, contorted figures crouch and leap among citrus trees and pomegranate shrubs. As we walk across a concrete patio towards the converted cottage, Kohan confides that the ceramic sculptures remind him of the beginning of his career over 20 years ago.

It is a warm summer day in the Los Angeles suburb where the Iranian-American artist lives and works. The hot weather has withered a rose bush that grows taller than the roof of his studio. When I stop to admire it, he says, “It’s as old as Roz,” referring to his sunny teenage daughter, who grew up visiting his workspace. Kohan opens the door and motions me to step inside.

To the right of the entrance is a wall covered with the outlines of works that were once in progress as well as endless drips of paint. Today, the patinated surface displays a large piece containing vertical seams and fringe-like strips of canvas—an arrangement that is reminiscent of a Moroccan wedding blanket. The background is grey, painted in washes while the shredded canvas is left raw and attached with small knots, hanging loosely from the stitched base. These knots recall the scroll-like talismans that are inscribed with prayers or wishes and then placed in Muslim shrines. I notice a similar use of string in an abstract sculpture that sits among rolled canvases nearby and wonder if the artist is revisiting certain concepts in search of something new. Hanging on an adjacent wall are handwritten notes tied to wooden posts: makeshift amulets that hold self-reflective messages.

As we stand in front of the cut and assembled painting, I ask Kohan if it refers to something specific. ‘It’s not specific, it’s experimental, I am recycling old works,’ he responds. “The text of the painting says ‘Go Crazy,’” he explains. “I painted it six months ago but recently tore it apart and put it back together, and then added the knots. Now the text is unreadable since it has been cut and glued in a different way.” Looking closely, I see remnants of Farsi script, indicating the title of an earlier composition. As I examine its textures, Kohan adds, “I worked many hours to make the original painting, only to cut it into pieces. It’s all about letting go, and in the process I find things that I think are important to keep. For me, the work is getting closer to life itself.”

Jazz in Iran through the Decades

A Duke Ellington concert ticket in Abadan, Iran in 1963. Courtesy Ajam Media Collective.

by Kamyar Jarahzadeh, Ajam Media Collective

The history of Iranian jazz is difficult to write, despite the country’s many collisions with the genre and its major acts. Iran has generated its share of jazz acts, yet also holds a special place in jazz history for the inspiration it has served to many of the genre’s greats. This mix is an attempt to capture those two elements of Iran’s jazz history: Iran as a site of inspiration for foreign jazz artists, as well as a cultural sphere from which jazz is produced.

The relationship between jazz and Iran began when the Pahlavi monarchy extended invitations to many Western musicians to visit in an attempt to bring so-called “high culture” to the country. As part of this opportunity, in the 1950s many jazz performers such as Duke Ellington came from the United States as a part of State Department sponsored diplomatic tours in which jazz musicians were sent to perform in various countries all the way from Turkey to Sri Lanka as a way to spread American influence. Ellington even famously dedicated a composition to the city of Isfahan, featured on this mix. Interestingly, many jazz artists stopped in oil-rich cities that were home to many expats, suggesting that there was likely very little of an audience for jazz beyond the Western-minded elite and expatriate community.

Around the same time, Iran began generating its own jazz acts, arguably beginning with Viguen in the 1950s and 1960s, who is occasionally referred to as the “Sultan of Iranian Jazz.” Legend has it that Viguen was inspired to introduce the guitar to Iranian music when he heard Russian soldiers playing it in the short-lived Azerbaijan People’s Government, a Soviet-occupied breakaway state in northwestern Iran from 1945-1946.