ANU School of Music welcomes the Jazmourian Ensemble as new Ensemble-in-Residence

We are delighted to announce that a new Ensemble-in-Residence at the ANU School of Music is the Jazmourian Ensemble, a Persian-Australian collaboration which seeks to respond musically to the beauty of diverse cultures in Australia, as well as the stunning natural environments in which these cultural conversations take place.

Sitting down together to play, composers Malek Mohammadi Nejad (from Kerman, Iran) and Dr Anna McDonald (from Canberra, via recently living in Iran) asked themselves what the east and west had in common. A lot - it turned out - when they examined the history of traditional music of Persia and Europe, and the cultural conversations that had taken place between these major cultural areas.

Exploring these convergences also highlights the various landscapes which have always informed musical creativity: from Vivaldi’s Italian Quattro Stagioni (The Four Seasons) in the west to a Persian musical improvisation speaking of a lonely expanse of the desert, showing that responses to Indigeneity are central to both musical traditions.

Indigeneity is a key feature of the Jazmourian Ensemble’s creativity and research, as they explore music’s embeddedness in place, the inner atmosphere that arises while centred in the landscape, and the conversations that occur in these spaces.

A sold-out concert of Persian poetry and music with Professor Zahra Taheri in early August initiated their residency.

They are now working with some of the School of Music’s finest performance students in the newly-formed Songroads Ensemble, a classical chamber ensemble which has creativity at its core. The ensemble is composing their own music for assessment and performance with the taut, evocative building blocks of ethnic and western music, and the rhythms and sounds of Australian Indigenous language. Interdisciplinary activities such as working with clay will be intertwined with rehearsals to encourage truly connected creativity.

Dr Anna McDonald, former leader of the London-based early music orchestra Gabrieli Consort and Players, has integrated her historical performance practise from the western violin to an eastern-ethnic musical language, a subject she recently explored in her PhD at the ANU. Persian music and heritage expert Malek Mohammadi Nejad, who has been living in Canberra for almost three years, brings a wealth of knowledge about interdisciplinary art, composing and teaching creativity to the ANU and Australia.