Orient/Occident

"This music is offered to those who have taught me that the most radical and revolutionary act is to praise life when everything is against it."
-Nima Janmohammadi '13 M.M.

With new students from Bulgaria, Cyprus, and Iran joining colleagues from the Americas, Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa, NEC's Contemporary Improvisation department is a truly international community.

In a year that has been marked by protests-both abroad and in our local community-we sometimes struggle to reconcile the impact of political events with our own impact as musicians in society. In the music school, the human potential of globalization plays out in unexpected and fascinating ways. Together, we navigate real and imagined boundaries between our individual differences and our common goals as artists.

In Orient/Occident, under the guidance of Tanya Kalmanovitch, NEC Contemporary Improvisation students examine and test the lenses through which the "East" and the "West" have traditionally been viewed. Persian poetry, the songs of Hank Williams, and Yiddish theatre music all share the stage. Bombastic American tunes turn boisterous through the filter of Balkan brass bands. Throughout the evening, you'll hear sounds of community-in the streets of Hong Kong, in Cairo's Tahrir Square, and here in our own department.

The year that has brought us the "Arab Spring" has revived questions of whether democracy is "Western" or "Eastern," along with challenges to the geography of music as popular tradition, religious heresy, or bearer of challenges to political authority.

Performances include Nigel Taylor, with a low-fi quadraphonic tape piece based on field recordings from Hong Kong; Nima Janmohammadi's original composition for chamber orchestra incorporating Persian and European instruments and materials; Jeremy Barnett's percussion reduction of Mozart's "Abduction from the Seraglio;" Sam Lisabeth, playing Hank Williams' "Cool Water" through the lens of Japanese free improvisation; Zoe Christansen's recomposition of American marches for Balkan brass band; Rachel Panitch, with protest chants from Tahrir Square capturing the internal and external experience of resistance; Jussi Reijonen's duo for ud and bass exploring the emotional impact of microtones; Eden McAdam-Somer's setting of a poem by Rumi for solo voice and violin.