- country:Belgium
- style(s):Global Fusion, Persian
- label:not signed
- type:Small Ensemble
- instrumentation:instrumental, vocal, percussion, visual, piano
- artist contact:Cluster vzw
Line up
- Anaïs Moffarts (Bass, vocals)
- Farnoosh Khodadadeh (DAf)
- Robbe Kieckens (Percussion)
- Soroosh Ghahramanloo (Setar, vocals)
- Thomas Noël (Piano, Fender Rhodes, Guitar, melodicum, harmonium)
Links
THE CITY'S SONG / THE TEHRAN SESSIONS (2018-2022)
In The City's Song / The Tehran Sessions, the capital of Iran is depicted through the eyes of singer and Setar player Soroosh Gharahmanloo , the Belgian-based Iranian Daf player Farnoosh Khodadadeh , filmmaker Jonatan Lyssens and initiator & multi-instrumentalist Thomas Noël .
Tehran. When you hear this, you probably think of the bloody and deadly repression of the revolutionary protests following the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amin, who was arrested by the morality police for wearing a 'wrong' headscarf and died in prison (September-November 2022). The closing concert tour of The Tehran Sessions took place during this revolutionary time, but was created during the two years preceding it.
The Tehran Sessions
Tehran is home to approximately 13 million people. It is a kaleidoscopic metropolis with fabulous monuments and suburbs through which the highways drive. You see children playing in the streets, shopkeepers behind their stalls, well-educated young people looking for work, artists who test the boundaries of what they can and may express. In a city where time stands still and yet people live fully in the now. Thomas Noël seized upon that 'now' to travel to the streets and houses of Tehran within his project The City's Song and to get to know the city and Iranian music better.
Thomas Noël's companions for this edition were, on the one hand, Soroosh Gharahmanloo from Tehran, a tall man with an epic beard and a renowned name in Iran as a setar player and singer, and, on the other hand, the Iranian Farnoosh Khodadadeh , who emigrated to Belgium out of love, plays the Iranian daf (frame drum) and acts as interpreter.
Together they created music, inspired by both classical poets and contemporary spoken word artists from Tehran. The two composers, Thomas and Soroosh, mix Iranian rhythms and timbres with a Western European harmonic drive. Farnoosh's daf provides the percussive pepper and salt, Robbe Kieckens on percussion and Anaïs Moffarts on bass completed the music.
Together with filmmaker Jonatan Lyssens, they also recorded their collaboration in Tehran in a film: a visual story that complements, counters and comments on the music and the songs.
The Tehran Sessions shows the many faces of Tehran and its atmospheres, the beautiful and the less beautiful sides, through the eyes of someone who lives there, but also of someone who left.
The Tehran Sessions brings these musical and other experiences to the outside world in various and fascinating ways: with concerts with accompanying images, a concert film based on those concerts, a CD, and a photo report by Sammy Van Cauteren .
Tehran as you have never seen it before: small and grand, poetic and tragic, from different perspectives. Let yourself be carried away, moved, overwhelmed.