Gity Razaz (born 1986)
Gity Razaz was born in Tehran and began studying music at the age of seven. She has bachelor’s and master’s degrees in composition from the Juilliard School.
Gity Razaz has composed music for orchestra, chamber ensembles, solo instruments, and voice, sometimes incorporating electronics, and has written several ballet scores. Her work is generally quite melodic with occasional influences of Persian music.
This Duo for violin and piano dates from 2007, Gity Razaz’s second year of composition studies at Julliard. She describes it on her website like this:
Duo for violin and piano is an adventurous study of a single tune explored in various ways within the two movements of the piece. The tune appears at the opening of each movement in the violin part, and sets the mood for the entire movement, during which the melody is fragmented, developed, and at times completely transformed into new material.
The Strange Highway is a 2011 work for eight cellos. The title comes from a poem by Chilean novelist Roberto Bolaño. Gity Razaz writes:
I was moved by the subtle but potent sense of desolation and vulnerability expressed through the poem’s powerful imagery. My attempt in writing the piece was to capture and recreate these emotions through rhythmic and violent opening and closing sections that engulf a lyrical, emotionally and dramatically charged middle section that uses dense, contrapuntal melodies and rich harmonies.
The Strange Highway is performed here by cellist Erin Snedecor with overdubbing and extensive video editing.
Here haunting A Prayer for the Abandoned is a 2015 work for piano trio. The three movements are played attacca (without a pause):