Unresolved
By Ali Ahmadifar
Poetry: Sohrab Sepehri (1928-1980 Tehran, Iran)
Composer: Ali Ahmadifar (Rasht, Iran)
Soprano: Monika Jalili (Salt Lake City, UT, USA)
Mezzo Soprano: Maryam Kouchakizad (Rasht, Iran)
Clarinet: Ara Beigi (South Salem, NY, USA)
Double Bass: Kyan Chbat (Ardsley, NY, USA)
Audio Editor and Production Manager: Homayoon Beigi (South Salem, NY)
This piece was written as a memory of a dear friend, Maestro G. Hossein Aslani, who fills a special place in my heart.
About the Artists
Ali Ahmadifar
Ali Ahmadifar (born 1976, Tehran) is a composer, a musicologist, and an educator of musical styles and history in Tehran, Rasht, and Ahvaz, in Iran. He studied classical harmony and contemporary styles with Maestro Keyvan Mirhadi. His works have been performed in Europe and Iran. One such example is a performances by the soloists of the Leipzig Philharmonic Orchestra in Autumn of 2006 at the main annual program of the orchestra. He studied at the school of music of Gillan University and has been a committee member for the Khoozestan music festival. He is the author of "The Analysis of the Musical Style of Arvo Pärt," (present at the Tallinn museum of Estonia). He has also been the technical translator for letters A and B of the Harvard Dictionary of Music into Persian, as well as many technical international papers on music. He has lectured on different musical research topics and has been the editor in chief of the radio program, "Contemporary Music," broadcast on the Cultural Radio of Iran.
Maryam Kouchakizad
Maryam Kouchakizad, Born in Iran, started receiving her singing instructions under the tutelage of her mother and uncle who were both singers of classical Persian music. For about 20 years, she has been active in many folk, pop, Persian classical, and western classical groups at a professional level. A sample of her activities is a solo performance at the prestigious Roudaki Hall of Tehran in 2019. She has received formal education in music instruction for children and has been teaching music in that capacity for nearly 17 years, for which she has received an award.
Monika Jalili
Iran - 1950s-1970s -- poetic songs popularized on radio and in films - then completely banned in 1979 at the time of the Iranian Revolution. Great poets and composers were forbidden to express themselves in a culture where poetry and music had always been so deeply ingrained. Infused with new blood, new instrumentations, new arrangements, and love, these are the songs that Monika Jalili has awakened and brought back to life. Born and raised in New York City, and a graduate of The Manhattan School of Music and Columbia University, and now based in Salt Lake City, Monika’s music career began in the world of musical theatre…..Broadway, Off-Broadway and touring with musicals around the US. That is how she had always envisioned her career to be...until one fortuitous mid-summer day in 2004, when she heard a Persian song from the 1950s entitled “Jaan-e Maryam.” This was the song that changed her life. And so began her journey including the Kennedy Center, Lincoln Center, United States Naval Academy, The Smithsonian’s Freer and Sackler Galleries in Washington D.C., Libby Gardner Hall with the Utah Philharmonic Orchestra, Gallivan Center, and sold-out concerts at the Place des Arts in Montreal with The Montreal Symphony Orchestra.
Kyan Chbat
Kyan Chbat, a tenth grader at Ardsley Highschool, in Ardsley, NY, plays the double bass and the cello. He has been attending the Music Conservatory of Westchester for 8 years. He has studied music theory for 5 years, cello for 8 and double bass for 6 under the guidance of John Lang. His double bass experience includes classical, jazz, and latin jazz. He practices often, and was honored to be a part of Ahmadifar's Unresolved requiem.
Ara Beigi
Ara Beigi was born in New York to Iranian-American parents in 2005. He started playing the recorder and the melody horn, from the age of 4. He began studying Piano at the age of 5 under masters such as the late Gregory H. Aslani and Cary Brown. He has has been studying the clarinet with John Lissauer for the past 5 years. Ara is also fluent in Persian and has been studying the Persian Tar with his father, and with Mr. Maziar Heydari in Tehran, Iran in the Persian classical style. He is a student at John Jay High School in Westchester, NY. He was the concert master for his middle school for three years in a row and has played the first seat in clarinet in his school band. Ara has also participated in the All-County band in Westchester, NY. He has won several awards for his piano and clarinet performances.
Homayoon Beigi
Homayoon Beigi has been conducting research in acoustics for over 30 years and has studied and taught the physics of sound at Columbia University for over 25 years. He also studied music theory with the late Maestro Gregory H. Aslani, along with collaborations with that G.H. Aslani in the composition of a fusion work with three incarnations, featuring the contemporary composition of G.H. Aslani and Homayoon's Persian compositions and arrangement in Chahargah and Shur. Homayoon has been working on the theory and practice of introducing 24-tet microtonal harmony to melodies derived the Persian classical repertoire. He studied the Persian Kamancheh with the late maestro, Andranik Aroustamian, from 1983 to 1993. From 1993 to 1995 he studied the classical Persian etudes of Mirza Abdollah for the Tar under Reza Derakhshani. He has also self-studied the Persian Dotar in the style of late Maestro Haj Ghorban Soleimani since 1996. He has performed in many Persian classical and fusion venues including several appearances at Columbia University, Adalphi University, Symphonyspace, IBM T.J. Watson Research Center, and the Bowery Poetry Club. His fusion work has involved Persian classical music with North Indian (Hindustani) Music (Tar and Dotar with Sitar and Tabla), South Indian (Carnatic) Music (Kamancheh with Mridangam and Voice), Persian popular oldies (Tar with Voice) and Contemporary American Music (e.g., George Gershwin on Tar with Voice), in collaboration with the American Suprano Singer, Monika Jalili. In 1995 and 1996 he won two consecutive Adventurous System and Software Research awards, while working at IBM Research, for the development of a paper-like interface using a tablet PC for entering and editing musical notation on a computer, utilizing pen-gestures and handwriting recognition technology. Dr. Beigi earned his BS (1984), MS (1985), and PhD (1991) from the mechanical engineering department of Columbia University. He worked at IBM TJ Watson Research Center for ten years (1991-2001) and since 2001 he has been the President of Recognition Technologies, Inc., conducting research on Speaker, Face, and speech Recognition. He has been an adjunct professor in the departments of Computer Science, Mechanical Engineering, and Electrical Engineering and has supervised PhD students in Civil Engineering at Columbia University since 1995.