Mirsaeed Hosseiny Panah - I Wish I Were Water (CD)

Release Date: 06/09/23

Classical/opera music inspired by old Iranian culture/poetry, sung in Farsi smelting in with contemporary European classical music, jazz and world

Confrontation between large nations and different ideologies characterizes the news
picture today. But under the headlines, a rapprochement between people across
national borders and cultural differences is happening. We don't have to go further
than a street in central Oslo to note that fusions between foreign food traditions and
Norwegian taste have been a great enrichment for our everyday life.
With his background in Iranian traditional music, jazz and Western modernism,
Mirsaeed Hosseiny Panah is a composer who searches for syntheses between Eastern
and Western cultural expressions. He has chosen texts by the great poet Ahmad
Shamlou. Shamlou himself represents such a synthesis in that he mixes Iranian
tradition with Western-inspired modernism. Hosseiny Panah's music eloquently
captures the complexity and often dark uncertainty that characterizes this secular
poet's work. He weaves instrumental textural patterns with tonal material from
traditional scales around the beautiful, almost expressionistic song lines.
Hosseiny Panah's eminent santur playing slips in and out of the orchestral textures
and creates a distinctive atmosphere.
Mirsaeed Hosseiny Panah shows with this CD release that he is a composer who has
dared to move on from his cultural background without abandoning it, doing so
with the clear intention of establishing a new and more comprehensive musical
identity. Important breakthroughs in music have often occurred in border lands. In
such a land, Mirsaeed is a strong voice and it will be exciting to follow his further
exploits in this terrain.