Saman Samadi - Ahunavaiti Gāthā no.1, stanza III - Jonathan Powell (video w/score)This composition was dedicated to Jonathan Powell, in honor of his 50th birthday, by whom was premiered at NeoArte Festival, Gdansk, Poland, on Saturday, October 26, 2019. This is the recording of the Czech premiere of the piece, by the same pianist, at the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague's Music Faculty (HAMU) on Friday, November 15, 2019.
Based on Zarathustra's homonymous poem, “Ahunavaiti Gāthā no.1, stanza III” is the third piece from a series of piano compositions of which the rhythmic structure is derived and developed from the language of his book (The Gāthās), Gāthic or Old Avestan which belongs to the ancient Iranian language group that is a sub-group of Eastern families of the Indo-European languages. This piece was formed by applying the poem's meter which is historically related to the Vedic tristubh-jagati family of meters. Converting Persian microtonal modes into an innovative well-tempered musical mode, the pitch organization is an endeavour for creating a syncretistic piece that could sublate Eastern and Western perspectives in order to hopefully expand timbral possibilities in the context of a global musical form. This work, in content, was inspired by the poem expounding on the divine essences of truth (Asha), the good-mind (Vohu Manah), and the spirit of righteousness. This composition was dedicated to Jonathan Powell, in honour of his 50th birthday, by whom was premiered at NeoArte Festival, Gdansk, Poland, on Saturday, October 26, 2019. Powell also performed this piece at the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague (HAMU), Prague, on November 15, 2019, and at Queen’s University, Belfast, on March 5, 2020. He will be performing this composition in Setkávání Nové Hudby Plus (Meetings of New Music), at Janáček Academy (JAMU) of Brno, in an online (live-streamed) concert, on December 8, 2020.
