The wind is the metaphor for lightness, movement, flight, freedom, elevation, and strength. Sailors claim that bigger ears do not improve listening quality while feeling the wind on your skin helps you anticipate the direction to take. The wind is the ambition of a dead leaf. The wind sucks in the energies of transformation. We can embrace a breeze, feel it caressing our skin and listen to the whespears that come from afar.

Sabâ is the name of the morning spring breeze that blows from east to north. The people of yesteryear thought that this soft and fresh wind, carrying amorous confidences and sowing nature, began its trajectory from the constellation of the Pleiades (Khoushe-y-e Parvin) in the direction of the Big Dipper (Haft Ôrang). Sabâ The name of Saba is one of the 24 ancient hymns and is associated with the purity of childhood.

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The piece

The first version of Sabâ is a commission from the Festival d'Automne à Paris for ensemble and two Iranian instruments. The work was premiered in 2007 by Nieuw Ensemble at the Opera of Bastille in Paris. I revised the piece in 2016 for the Italian ensemble, Divertimento. What distinguishes the instrumentation of this piece is the role of the plucked instruments. Despite a precisely written score, the piece has an improvised and mystical character, is fluid in its rhythm. The use of micro-intervals participates in the subtle knot between color and the monodic essence of the writing. In this scene, an instrument like oud, sometimes retaining its own musical identity, sometimes adopting the language of others, juggles freely between two musical universes: is it the expressive richness of an instrument like tār that takes over, or is it the strength of a contemporary discourse that dominates traditional sounds?