Yalda: A Winter Solstice Concert, BlueShore Financial Centre for the Performing Arts at CapU, Dec. 22, 8 p.m. For details visit vi-co.org.
As an antidote to the longest, darkest night of the year, a cast of musicians are offering an evening of warmth, atmosphere and connection to combat the chaotic feeling of the holiday season.
Yalda: A Winter Solstice Concert is taking place at Capilano University’s BlueShore Financial Centre for Performing Arts on Saturday (Dec. 22), led by the celebrated Vancouver Inter-Cultural Orchestra.
“We often look for excuses to bring cultures together and this is one of the events that many different cultures have celebrated over centuries,” explains Farshid Samandari, the orchestra’s composer-in-residence, adding that cultures far and wide, with varying interpretations, have historically marked the solstice through celebrations, festivals and other gatherings – whether it was as an acknowledgment in primarily agricultural communities that the seasons were changing, or as a means for families to gather during the longest night of the year to toast their own good fortunes. “The purpose is to celebrate our commonality.”
As composer-in-residence Samandari says his role is to help guide with programming, planning and, naturally, writing music for the orchestra.
For the orchestra’s first ever winter solstice concert – it gets its name “Yalda” from the Persian word for the longest night of the year, and the celebrations that come with that – Samandari says concertgoers can expect an atmospheric evening of chamber music for voices and intercultural strings.
“The program is fairly accessible, so it’s not complex music from different cultures – it’s more accessible music from different cultures. The main tool that everyone should bring with them is just openness to hear something that they are not familiar with and embrace, basically, the variety of things – like going to a restaurant that you haven’t been to, so you should be open for the unexpected,” he says.
The concert will feature small ensembles and soloists, including a trio of Persian singers, a cello octet, a kamanche consort, as well as tenor Willy Miles-Grenzberg, erhu virtuoso Yun Song, guitarist and vocalist Moshe Denburg, kamanche player and composer Behzad Mirloo and narrator and reader Jenny Lu, who will all be performing a repertoire from a range of world music from Persian, Chinese, Japanese, Hebrew and other traditions.
“The program also involves some poetry reading, as is common in many cultures,” says Samandari.
Samandari, who has a doctorate in musical composition from UBC, says it was important to poll other musicians and composers with the Vancouver Inter-Cultural Orchestra when compiling the program for the concert.
“As we compiled some material I started talking to some other people from different parts of the world to see if they had anything from their own culture, and of course everyone has something,” he says.
For Samandari, who is Iranian-Canadian, one piece is of particular importance to him that’s being performed during the show.
“For every composer or every artist that’s involved there’s some parts that are more important for them. I have a piece for the Persian consort that is being performed for the first time, so it’s important for me, it’s more relevant for me,” he says.
Described as an early music consort of bow instruments – essentially, the Persian violin family – Samandari’s piece, like the whole solstice concert, will follow the performance’s overarching theme, which is bringing light, love and warmth to combat the darkness of winter, all while showcasing a winter concert that isn’t the usual Christmas concert affair.
“We thought that in North Vancouver there is a bigger Persian community than some other parts of the Lower Mainland, and we thought it might make a good excuse to bring Persians and the rest of the residents together to celebrate. We have music from Spain, we have some Jewish music, we have some Christian chorale music that is arranged for cello ensemble, and then we have some Western music, and some Persian and Chinese music,” he says.
“We basically are looking for an excuse for doing things that would bring cultures and communities together.”
