Identity / Dialogue

Is there a dominant culture? A look to the southeast reveals that intercultural exchange sharpens identities and leads to cultural flourishing. The rich cultural landscape stretching from the Mediterranean through the Near East to the Middle East exemplifies this. The concert program explores this theme, using Jewish and Persian voices as examples. For instance, Tehran still boasts a large Jewish community, a fact reflected in Amen Feizabadi's work.

In his new piece, the multidisciplinary composer highlights commonalities between Persian, Arabic, and Jewish music using contemporary means. His inspiration is the image of an "untamed river" that connects cultural spaces while simultaneously retaining its own pristine identity.

Golfam Khayam is also fascinated by the diverse traditions of her native Persia. The artist sharpens her own identity through the synthesis of Persian tradition and contemporary music, which also allows for improvisational freedom, as in "Seven Valleys of Love," which is presented in a new version for string orchestra. In contrast, Yair Klartag also works with AI-generated voices to deconstruct and re-emerge identities. The 2021 Siemens Advancement Award winner intensifies perception and listens to the very core of sounds.

Oscar Bianchi's "Zamān" (Persian for "time") is not a work about exile as a historical event, but about the time in which exile returns. Inspired by the diaries (1943) of his great-aunt Dora Polacco, who fled to Switzerland under precarious conditions during the fascist occupation of Trieste—read within the context of Thomas Mann's "The Magic Mountain" and his image of a "fever of matter"—exile appears as an ambivalent force between loss and transformation.