Intizar

When I visited the national Fajr Music Festival in Tehran for the first time, I walked into a performance by a conservatory class, with a fantastic singer. Given the fact that I attended by chance, I assumed that this – high – level, must be the average norm among music students. But no, although the general quality is high, the singer, Mohammad Motamedi, turned out to be an exception.

The pieces are partly Motamedi and the trio’s own compositions, based on classical Iranian musical forms, and partly arrangements of classical Iranian songs. The lyrics come from freethinkers of classical Iranian poetry, Saadi, Hafez and Omar Khayyam. There’s also Araf Azvini’s pacifist poem about a soldier confronted with the death of a comrade in ‘Az Khoune Javanan’; here the combination of Motamedi’s voice and Rembrandt Frerichs’ playing of the church organ is chilling. Instrumentally, the album was recorded in a former church that is now an organ museum, and some of the instruments of the museum were utilised. The longest piece, ‘In the Middle of the Garden’, starts with Frerichs playing a Walter fortepiano from 1790, now re-tuned to a Persian scale, thus coming close to the sound of the Persian santur. The entire ensemble gyrates to a mesmerising climax, and Motamedi’s vocal whirls into evermore ecstatic highs, with a somewhat Bitches Brew and Grateful Dead drive. Motamedi is a master in tahrir, the classical yodelling technique, and he uses it extensively throughout the 15-minute+ track.

Intizar means longing. Titled in this way, the album symbolises the hope for a new era, most likely directed at Iran.