Description
Audio
Video
Duration
Premiere
Rafael Caldentey, clarinet
Anna-Kathrin Faber, violin
Wolfgang Zamastil, 'cello
Marc Trischler, piano
Manuel Nawri, conductor
22 July 2006
ISCM World New Music Festival
Stuttgart, Germany
Instrumentation
Program Notes
Haziri, literally “presence,” is the name of a type of spirit possession practiced at Muslim saint shrines in India. My first experience with it was in the summer of 2003, when I was invited by anthropologist Carla Bellamy to a Shi’a family imambara in the Santa Cruz neighborhood of Mumbai. My work, Haziri, draws on my memory of this experience as well as Bellamy’s recordings of the process made in 2005.
Haziri’s musical material is based on my analysis of the sonic characteristics of the recordings and its narrative structure reflects that of the process of spirit possession. In performance, the players are put in the place of the person with haziri, enduring a difficult physicality and through the process of physical trial, regaining their autonomy.