World Premiere by Iranian-American Composer, Richard Danielpour, Performed at The Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts

May 8, 2019

Entertainment , Iranians in Diaspora , Culture , Kodoom Official Blog

Culture and Entertainment Blog, Kodoom.com Editorial:
For the first time musical work by twice Grammy-nominated Iranian-American composer, Richard Danielpour, is performed at the prestigious Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts in Beverly Hills, California, by pianist Inna Faliks, one of the most “adventurous and passionate” (The New Yorker) artists of her generation. She will be performing a world premiere by Richard Danielpour and works by Rodion Shchedrin, Schumann and Chopin in her Wallis debut on Sunday, May 12, 2019, 7 pm, in The Wallis’ Bram Goldsmith Theater (Event description link). There will be a prelude pre-concert conversation at 6:00 pm.

Born in New York to Persian parents, Richard Danielpour grew up in New York City and West Palm Beach, Florida. He studied at Oberlin College and the New England Conservatory of Music, and later at the Juilliard School of Music, where he received a DMA in composition in 1986. Danielpour is one of only three composers (the others being Stravinsky and Copland) to be signed to an exclusive recording contract with Sony Classical.

In 2012, Danielpour discussed his work "Toward a Season of Peace" commissioned by Pacific Symphony for their 2012 American Composers Festival celebrating Nowruz (Persian New year). He discusses this work and his Persian roots in this video:

Danielpour has been described as brilliantly orchestrated, intensely expressive, and rhythmically vibrant. His work has attracted an illustrious array of champions; and, as a devoted mentor and educator, he has also had a significant impact on a younger generation of composers. Danielpour’s first opera Margaret Garner — written with Nobel Laureate Toni Morrison — took critics and audiences by storm with sold-out houses in its 2005 premiere by the co-commissioning opera companies of Detroit, Cincinnati, and Philadelphia.

Danielpour has discussed his Persian roots: "I was born in New York City to parents who were originally from Iran. My father was born in Hamadan and my mother was born in Teheran. We lived in Long Island until I was seven years old. At that point, we moved to Iran for a year. My father had been diagnosed with MS and wanted to go to Iran to retrieve his shares of a family business that he shared with his father and his brothers. With the exception of one brother, his youngest, who was always very loyal to him, my father ‘s father and one brother in particular did their best to make his life, and consequently ours, very uncomfortable there. In the process I contracted nephritis (which was the kidney infection that killed Mozart). In Iran they did not have the proper medicine to help me heal properly and my maternal grandmother, who was a central figure in my family, flew from New York to Iran to help make arrangements for us to leave.

We finally left Tehran for New York in the spring of 1964 , and lived in Long Island for a little over a year before we finally moved to south Florida in the West Palm Beach area. This is where I stayed and was raised until I went to college in 1974.

By the time I was in college, first for a year at Oberlin College and then eventually at the New England Conservatory in Boston where I received my bachelor’s degree in composition in 1980, I had distanced myself from my Iranian heritage. The memories of our time there were anything but pleasant, and by 1979, with the onset of the Revolution, I heard of members of my family on both sides being detained, and some of them jailed. One of them was tortured and executed in June of 1980, so as a result it was easy to understand why I would prefer to identify at that time with my American roots. My parents desired for us to grow up as Americans, but with the awareness of our history and its inherent richness. This was aided and abetted by the presence of my extraordinary grandmother. When we were children in Iran, my sister and I were bilingual; I still sometimes dream in Farsi!"

He added: "The awareness of my Persian heritage returned to me about 10 years ago when I started composing music that was somewhat informed by the work of the great Persian poet Rumi. Many of the works I had written in recent years were also inspired by the courage, dignity, and will of the Iranian people to stand proud in the face of an oppressive theocratic regime. An exploration into Persian art and music also had a great deal to do with my embracing new ideas which were actually ancient ideas... For me, being an American of Iranian descent is a great blessing. It allows me to be both modern and ancient; it allows me to be in the present and in the past at once. My Iran is not the Iran of the present day, but one that exists in the minds of the great poets: Hafez, Rumi, Khayam, Ferdosi, etc."

Danielpour is presently writing a group of songs for voice and strings on poems of Rumi in Farsi for Grammy award-winning soprano, Hila Plitmann.

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