Shiva Feshareki reflects on Valentine’s Rhapsody

On Saturday 5 November the London Sinfonietta premiered a selection of chamber works by our Writing the Future composers.  After the event  Shiva Feshareki sent us this blog post about her thoughts on both the concert day and afterwards. Thank you Shiva!

The concert on Saturday 5 November was one of those strange, surreal experiences.  In my opinion, I had the country’s finest instrumentalists on stage ready to perform my piece Valentine’s Rhapsody.  So I was at ease… in that sense. The issue, I must confess, was the feeling of self-doubt.  You see, I had written an extremely personal and difficult piece emotionally, and it is dedicated to someone I love dearly – Valentine Davies – and who has (without exaggeration) saved my life.  I wanted this piece to show a transition, mirroring my life. This is what the piece is about and how Valentine’s impact changed who I am, and for the better.   My doubt was that, on a personal level, this is the most significant piece I have written.  Will it ever have that massive, heart-wrenching impact it had on me whilst thinking and composing it, but in performance? …to others?

I think the conclusion is that one shouldn’t over-think these things (something I have to remind myself every second of everyday).

A) I wrote a piece.
B) I quite literally translated an almost brutal auto-biography.
C) I was honest.
D) The performers respected that honesty.
E) It all represents this eventually positive journey into a short, purposefully understated piece.
F) It was performed better than I could imagine, and it had the opportunity to be heard.

First Conclusion: A+B+C+D+E+F = What more could I want?

Second conclusion: once a piece is written – it is permanent – it does not wither.  So the person the piece was written for will have a permanent reminder of how she helped me, and especially, helped me help myself.  And as for ‘Writing the Future’, quite literally I hope the piece lives on in the future (or at least, I hope that the score of it that I threw into the River Thames off the Embankment Bridge, drifts like a message in a bottle… at least in my thoughts and ponderings).

Thank you to the London Sinfonietta’s Writing the Future for supporting and promoting new music with the same relentless, unique passion as it takes for me to write the music.  This is a relationship that I will cherish, and will inspire me further, both musically and personally.

Click here to  listen to Valentine’s Rhapsody and other Writing the Future works premiered on Saturday 5 November.

 

Writing the Future: First Pieces (part 2)

Shiva Feshareki is another of the six composers selected to take part in the London Sinfonietta’s new Writing the Future scheme, and has been working with the ensemble’s Principal clarinet Mark van de Wiel since the scheme’s launch in February.

The result of this collaboration is a Sinfonietta Short, titled departing in peace, arriving with love which will be premiered at an exclusive London Sinfonietta’s Pioneers’ event on Wednesday 13 April 2011.

Keep your eyes on the London Sinfoniettta website for news about the first public performance.

Composer Shiva Feshareki (r) at the launch of Writing the Future, February 2011. Photo © Briony Campbell

Shiva tells us more about her piece…

Mark and I already knew each other, when we met on stage of the Royal Festival Hall in a Q&A session last year. Not exactly the most common place to meet, but a lot started even then. In regards to this collaboration, I think he had already understood my way of thinking. I like picking up things that come my way very spontaneously, which then register in my head as being significant, or having had an impact on me. So during the time we have spent with each other so far, we have been focussing on emotions and meanings, and what’s significant for both of us, both in music and in our everyday lives. Now, this will remain between just the two of us, however, for example, I asked him about what makes him happy, what makes him smile, why he likes certain passages of music (which he played a lot of for me: such a luxury), why certain things are scary for him or tedious etc (rather than what sound does it produce if you shove a pen knife in the clarinet or what extended technique can we bastardise this time(!)). In other words, for Mark and me, it’s about the personal, not the technical (or techniques). And I really did find some really beautiful moments emerged between us, so far, in the collaboration. This doesn’t mean that the piece I am writing for him will be so tailored for him that other clarinettists can’t play it; it just means that we have found a soul for the piece, and it’s something that I am now translating into the music (it never had any verbal identity anyway).

The next time we meet, Mark will receive the complete piece. He already knew that that’s what I do: something just clicks in my head after much internal thought, and then I write ’the whole’, with no disruption.

Mark is a fantastic person. Not only does he produce one of the best sounds I have ever heard, but his attitude and commitment to music have no comparison. We both trust each other wholeheartedly, and that is the definition of a collaboration.’

Shiva will not be using electronics in this piece.

Book your tickets to hear more of the Writing the Future pieces at our Pavilions pre-concert performance on Sunday 29 May 2011.

Click here to find out more about how the London Sinfonietta is creating new music with some of the finest emerging composers on Writing the Future.