Almost like a wind instrument, the cello sounds in sahara, the first piece on the new album by composer Aftab Darvishi. Educated in Amsterdam (film music) and The Hague (classical), Darvishi explores playing techniques from her native Iran. A Thousand Butterflies is the name of the album, an overview of her work to date, which was released on the 30M Records label, which aims to offer Iranian musicians an international stage.
Cellist Mahyar Tahmasbi gets melancholy notes, which are too intelligent to put in the neoclassical box, even though the music rubs against them. Also in the second part, Hidden Dream by the Stockholm Saxophone Quartet, there are several musical lines, but not really several layers. It remains an atmospheric drawing without contrast: when the music finally threatens to derail for a while, Darvishi nevertheless falls into the well-known groove. The ‘title track’, performed by the Doelen Ensemble, offers more variation in colour, but the sounded butterfly fluttering is rather unoriginal.
Aftab Darvishi
A Thousand Butterflies
Classic
★★★ renvers
30M Records
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