New Music for the old Ceremony

Elshan Ghasimi - Elies Miniatures I & II

Dear friends,

In the summer of last year, Elshan Ghasimi, Michal Martychowiec and JMH Schindele began following the footsteps of the mathematician, biochemist, mystic and poet El Arbi Bouqdib, who died in 2016. With the help of the family, and in particular his youngest son and estate administrator Joseph Bouqdib the El Arbi Bouqdib Archive was founded.

The purpose of this archive is to trace the life of this extraordinary free spirit, based on the approximately 20,000 documents and items left behind, to construct a poetic work of remembrance.

Initial archival-artistic work has brought the first treasures to light. The virtuoso and composer Elshan Ghasimi gained inspiration from individual objects and has written music and songs based on them. We are happy to announce the publication of two live albums Elies Miniatures I – Ein Garten singender Dinge and EM II – Archivblumen, for which purpose the music label Bublitz Music was recently founded. In the future, Bublitz Music will also focus on the other classical musics – an evocative term invoked by the British musicologist and critic Michael Church.

A short passage from the press release:

“What does a magnetic field generator sound like? What does the last cigarette lighter say? Whose hands are there, coming towards us, and what is the secret behind the star chart?

Elshan Ghasimi’s concept album Elies Miniatures I – Ein Garten singender Dinge combines classical Persian music with the demands of contemporary conceptual art and the processing of an archive.

With the utmost sensitivity in musical expression, the world-class soloist leads us into a new musical universe on the tar. As a composer, she interlaces different modal scales of the Radīf*, combines them with influences and elements of minimal music and interweaves poetry by Omar Chayyām, Hossein Gol-e-Golab, Hatef Esfahani and her own texts. On this album, Ghasimi appears in various roles as composer, soloist, singer and reciter.”

As album, concert and exhibition cycle, Elies Miniatures is an ongoing narrative as well as a novel form of merging music, concert, visual art, exhibition and biographical narration. If you are interested in deeper diving into the conceptual and artistic framework of this collaborative work of Elshan Ghasimi, Michal Martychowiec and JHM Schindele visit the cycle's website.