Golfam Khayam and Mona Matbou Riahi revealed their ECM debut album Narrante during an exceptional launch event in Geneva last month. A forward–thinking Iranian duo is shaping the international contemporary music scene.

Along with John Abercrombie, Heinz Holliger, Tigran Mansurian and Anouar Brahem to name only a few, Naqsh Duo has earned a place in the pantheon of finest music. The debut album Narrante is an outstanding combination of original composition and daring improvisation, a breath of fresh air, in line with the unconventional spirit of world-renowned music label ECM.

Naqsh Duo was born in 2014 out of a common musical inspiration and vision of two emerging talents. Both performers and composers, the guitarist Golfam Khayam and the clarinettist Mona Matbou Riahi started music education in Iran, before pursuing further studies abroad. Golfam holds a Master of Performer-composer from the School of Music (HEM) in Geneva, while Mona completed higher studies at the University of Music and Performing Arts in Vienna (MDW).

A number of significant journeys through remote tribal and rural areas of Iran provided these two young musicians with a great sense of their own cultural heritage, and raised their awareness on their homeland’s rich and deeply rooted traditions of music and storytelling – Baluchi, Kurdish, or Turkish…. Soon, their desire to integrate various elements of Persian classical and Iranian folk music into Western contemporary classical language brought them to jam together and follow their own aesthetic impulses.

Narrante is now released on both ECM and Hermes records. Naqsh Duo will play at the Guitar on Sand Festival in Bodrum, Turkey on 24 July, at the Copenhagen Guitar Festival in Denmark on 9 August, and at The AHA! Festival Universe in Göteborg, Sweden on 31 October.

Introducing radical new sound

This musical project made an immediate impact on Manfred Eicher, ECM founder and executive, who started recording sessions with Naqsh Duo in July 2015. Narrante is an evocative journey consisting of nine pieces: from Testamento to Lamento-Furioso, “Italian terms that are connected to an expression and a particular form, and are somehow relating very deeply with each stage of our long story of personal search”, explains Golfam. “This is a musical narration going through many colourful, comforting and yet disturbing chapters”. Beyond an imaginative collaboration approaching the material from myriad angle, it is the changes in style, language and values that define Naqsh Duo. Narrante is a great leap forward in the contemporary sound. Interweaving Persian ornaments, modes, micro-tones, rhythms and Western contemporary music structures, the album reflects “our personal take on resources that appear in different shapes or forms, by putting light on aspects of traditional music that are normally not visible”, says Golfam. The result is a meticulous balance of raw edge, softness and subtle tones, which makes it a unique language hard to put into a category. For well-seasoned ears chasing musical refinements, it sounds truly radical. “My decisions and choices are based upon shared affinity to the musical content. The content is the read line that develops personal sounds”, explains Manfred Eicher. “Naqsh Duo has a particular touch and timbre, a very personal way of creating music that is rooted in the tradition of Persian modes, and that shines through”.

Approaching performance and improvisation differently

Highly experimental in its approach, Naqsh Duo is seeking to integrate a kind of forgotten improvisational practice into Western contemporary music. Drawing from the ancient tradition of the performer-composer and inspired by Witold Lutoslawski’s technique of limited improvisation, Golfam Khayam aspires to “bring the spirit and freshness of improvisation into musical scores limited in time and into the contemporary repertoire”. It is, in particular, this combination of improvisational freedom with structural rigour of written music that finds a vivid, mesmerizing and sensual poetry in Narrante. It also highlights how inextricably intertwined composition, performance and improvisation are. “Our objective is to have improvised music sound like written music, and written music played like improvised music”, says Manfred Eicher. When asked about her recording experience with ECM producer, Mona answers: “It was like writing a poem that finally coheres into a euphoric climax”.

Today Golfam Khayam and Mona M. Riahi not only perform extensively abroad, but they also provide lectures and workshops in prestigious academic institutions. Awarded HEM full scholarship and fellowship, Golfam is currently involved in a first-of-its-kind research that evolves around the question of adapting Persian traditional techniques to the classical guitar, which should generate a “new Persian vocabulary” by the end of the year. In addition, she soon went on to win the International Rostrum of Composers who selected her in the “Windows of the World” category last month.

Remaining true to the essence of Iran’s ancient heritage while pointing to the future with intelligence and sensibility, Naqsh Duo has carved out its own place on the international contemporary music scene. Intermingling cultural worlds, the music of Narrante is refreshingly life affirming and rises above human divisions. “In bringing my cultural traditions into contemporary music, I wish to link myself to both Western and Iranian audiences”, says Golfam Khayam. It is little wonder then that the duo effortlessly bridges the gap not only between performer and composer but also between performer and audience. For Manfred Eicher, this is just the beginning of a long-term collaboration. “There was an inspirational kind of first encounter, we still have a long way to go”.