Growing Songs
Sunday, December 8th, 2pm | Berkeley Hillside Club
Join us at the historic Berkeley Hillside Club for the culmination of our second ‘Growing Songs’ residency with renowned Iranian vocalist Mahsa Vahdat and composer Atabak Elyasi! This celebratory concert features a special performance that brings together musicians from both Persian and Western Classical music traditions.
“Growing Songs” is a multi-year project in which Persian singer and activist Mahsa Vahdat & composer Atabak Elyasi collaborate with Musaics in the creation of 10 new songs for voice and ensemble.
The songs will be collectively created by Mahsa Vahdat, 3 singers from the Bay Area’s Persian diaspora and the Armenian-American community, 4 composers and arrangers, and 3 instrumentalists trained in the Western classical tradition.
Ms. Vahdat will launch the process by setting texts of classical Persian poets (Omar Khayyam, Hafez, Saadi, and Rumi) to music, composing melodies related to the specific personalities, life situations, and vocal ranges of the each artist.
We believe this project will bridge Persian and Western music tonality and traditions; empower participating artists to renew and reinvigorate both traditions through the creation of new works; build resilience, strength and liberation through collaborative art-making; and preserve and celebrate threatened cultural traditions.
The Program
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A SIGH FOR A LOVING HEART
RUMI / COMPOSED BY MAHSA VAHDAT / ARR. BY ATABAK ELYASI
GOOD NEWS
HAFEZ / COMPOSED BY MARJAN VAHDAT / ARR. BY MILAD YOUSUFI
THE BLUE OF PASSION
INSTRUMENTAL / MELODY BY MAHSA VAHDAT / ARR. BY KARNA MENDONCA
JOY IS WHERE THE BELOVED IS FOUND
HAFEZ / COMPOSED BY MAHSA VAHDAT / ARR. BY PETER MYERS
YOU, THE LIFE AND THE WORLD
RUMI / COMPOSED BY MAHSA VAHDAT / ARR. BY PETER MYERS
AWAITING MY BELOVED
BABA TAHER / COMPOSED BY MAHSA VAHDAT / ARR. BY PETER MYERS
RAIN, OH RAIN
TRAD. / COMPOSED BY MARJAN VAHDAT / ARR. BY ATABAK ELYASI
MY SPRING YOU ARE
RUMI / COMPOSED BY MAHSA VAHDAT / ARR. BY ATABAK ELYASI
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The Artists
Mahsa Vahdat
Born in 1973 in Tehran, vocalist, activist and composer Mahsa Vahdat has performed as an independent singer and musician in many concerts and festivals throughout the world. With her profound command and vision of the Persian musical tradition has developed a highly personal style of performance, rooted in Persian classical and regional vocal music and its complex system of modes, melodic motives, and ornamentation, infused with contemporary and innovative expressions and influences.
Her many performance and recording projects include collaborations with many of the world's most acclaimed musicians including Marjan Vahdat, Mighty Sam McClain, Kronos Quartet, TordGustavson, Atabak Elyasi , Teatr Zar, SKRUK Choir, Kitka and countless others. Through creative dialogues with her collaborators, and explorations as an unaccompanied soloist, she has developed a diverse, unique, and wide-ranging repertoire.
Marjan Vahdat
Marjan Vahdat is an Iranian award-winning singer and musician. Her career has given a deeper knowledge of Iranian poetry and music to large audiences in Europe, America, Asia, Oceania, and Africa.
Marjan has developed her personal style based on the Persian vocal tradition of classical and regional folk music, with a contemporary expression. She always searched for ways to make her music relevant to the present world. Even if the origin of her style is Iranian, she believes in her music’s ability to express a universal message of humanism and freedom.
She has developed a unique style of performance, rooted in Persian classical and regional vocal music traditions, and infused with contemporary and innovative expressions and influences. Her many performances and recording projects include collaborations with many of the World's Most acclaimed musicians.
Atabak Elyasi
Iranian-American musician and composer Atabak Elyasi, of Berkeley, is a master of the Persian setar — the instrument most commonly used to accompany the voice in traditional Persian music. Atabak has played and performed Setar for the majority of his life and has been teaching this sacred instrument for at least 30 years, passing on this lineage to innumerable students. Atabak has worked on several renowned musical projects with 2018 ACTA mentor artist Mahsa Vahdat and her sister Marjan as a setar player, composer and musical arranger, as well as arranging pieces for the Skruk Choir in Norway and the Kronos Quartet.
Adrienne Shamszad
An Oakland, California native of Iranian heritage, Adrienne Shamszad sings revolutionary anthems, prayerful power ballads, blues, lullabies, and love songs in English and in Farsi. Her strong and soulful voice, expressive guitar work and bold performance style have made her a popular West Coast performer for over a decade.
Adrienne’s poetry is intimate and genuine, inspired by the mystic Poets of Iran as much as the folk poet-songwriters of the 60s and 70s. She can transform a stage into a sacred place with the magic of her voice.
Her mixed cultural background, international travels, and deep love of people reside in her music. She aspires to open listeners’ hearts to the unfamiliar and, in doing so, invite more understanding, courage and curiosity into this world. Since beginning formal training in Traditional Iranian vocal arts and music in 2016, Adrienne's music has expanded to a genre of it's own as she brings the messages of her ancestors into the present.
Khatchadour Khatchadourian
Khatchadour is an Armenian vocalist and a duduk woodwind musician based out of the San Francisco Bay Area. He grew up singing in the Armenian children's choir, Karoun, and credits his focus on meditative genres to his early years singing in Orthodox Armenian church. He began playing the Armenian woodwind Duduk in 2006, and sings in Armenian, Arabic and Farsi languages. He holds Bachelor's degrees in both Anthropology & Middle Eastern Studies from the University of California, Berkeley.
Elana Sasson
The road that led Elana Sasson to the music she creates today is long. Generations upon generations long, stretching around the world, dipping into different cultures and languages, styles and sounds. Elana Sasson is an Iranian/Kurdish American vocalist and musician from the U.S. She has trained in classical and regional music of Iran and Kurdistan under master musicians Mahsa Vahdat and Marjan Vahdat. Her music brings new life to these sacred traditions of music through contemporary arrangements, compositions that oscillate between east and west, and soulful expression. She has performed in the United States, Europe, and in the Middle East, and is currently based in Spain, completing a M.M in Contemporary Performance and Production at Berklee College of Music.
Audrey vardanega
Praised as a “[musically] eloquent” (San Francisco Classical Voice) player “with the kind of freedom, authority, and strength…that one expects from the world’s finest pianists” and a “bewitching musical presence” (The Piedmont Post), American pianist and arts entrepreneur Audrey Vardanega (b.1995) has performed as a solo and collaborative pianist across Europe, China, and the United States.
In 2019, in response to her passion for bringing artists together for new opportunities for performance, the creation of new work, and interdisciplinary collaboration, Audrey founded Musaics of the Bay.
Nigel Armstrong
Nigel Armstrong is emerging as a dynamic and creative artist both within and beyond the realm of classical music. From his musical beginnings as a member of "The Little Fiddlers" in Sonoma, CA to collaborations with tango musicians in Argentina he's enjoyed using the violin in a versatile manner throughout his life.
As soloist and chamber musician Nigel has performed with orchestras throughout the world, and feels fortunate to have had the chance to explore great orchestral literature throughout his career.
Nigel also recently had the opportunity to live with and learn from the Plum Village community founded by Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh, where he spent a year working on their organic farm and taking part in their daily life, an experience for which he continues to be grateful.
Peter Myers
Praised for the warmth of his sound and range of color, American cellist Peter Myers (b. 1985) is internationally known as a chamber musician. A founding member of the Saguaro Piano Trio, which won first prize in the 2009 International Chamber Music Competition Hamburg, as well as SAKURA, a unique and innovative quintet of cellos, Mr. Myers has appeared at the Marlboro, La Jolla, and Mozaic festivals, on tour with Musicians from Marlboro, and abroad in Germany, Italy, Japan, China, Australia, New Zealand, Mongolia, Laos, and Pakistan. Since 2017, he has held the position of Assistant Principal Cello with the San Francisco Opera; he has also performed as guest principal cellist of the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra. His mentors have included Ronald Leonard at the Colburn Conservatory and Ralph Kirshbaum at the University of Southern California. He plays on an 1876 cello by Claude-Augustin Miremont.