If nothing else, Iranian-born composer/musician Loga Ramin Torkian hopes when you walk out of Centennial Hall Thursday night, you will be enlightened.
He and his band Niyaz, which includes his wife, Iranian-born/Indian-raised vocalist Azam Ali, arenโt aiming for an intellectual exchange with all the synchronized visuals and songs based on the poetry of eighth century Sufi mystic and poet Rabia Al Basr.
But they are hoping that at some point as you reflect on the experience, you come away more empathetic of people and their differences.
โI think if we can create and cultivate empathy, then we understand each other better,โ Torkian said during a phone call from home in Los Angeles last month to talk about his UA Presents concert on Thursday, March 5. โI think what we would really love or hope the audience would walk away with is a transformative experience. Thatโs the best that we can hope for.โ
Tucson is one of a small handful of American cities that will get Niyazโs โThe Fourth Light Project,โ a show that incorporates Sufi dances, music and extraordinary visuals synchronized to movement and sound.
Torkian composed the music based on 21st century global trance tradition that blends Sufi poetry with folk songs from the coupleโs native Iran and bordering Persian Gulf countries. The music incorporates acoustic music with electronics; Torkian calls Niyaz an acoustic electronic band.
โThe Fourth Light Projectโ will be performed by five musicians including Didem Basar playing the stringed Kanun and Torkian playing a stringed instrument created for him called the Kamaan.
Canadian musician and programmer Gabriel Ethier, who specializes in the Mac-based digital audio software Abelton, will be onstage working with the visuals, while dancer Tanya Evanson performs the trancelike traditional Sufi whirling dance.
At the center is Aliโs voice, which has been described as ethereal and otherworldly. Ali, a two-time Juno nominee (Canadaโs version of the Grammy) has contributed vocals to a half-dozen film and television soundtracks including โThe Matrix-Revolutions,โ โPrince of Persia,โ โThor โ The Dark World,โ โTrue Blood,โ โAliasโ and โPrison Break.โ
โItโs ultimately a show and an immersive experience in the sense that it kind of feels like theater,โ Torkian explained. โItโs very cinematic. โฆ Everything is synchronized and reacts to the music or the movement on stage. So if somebody moves, the visual changes. If somebody plays a certain sequence, the visual changes. It creates a very strong synergy in that sense.โ
There are flashes of psychedelic images that recall the 1960s, but not in the music or the story.
โThe entire story of the show is based upon the first feminist of our region, Rabia (Rabia Al Basr) and everything โ the visual and the music โ is developed around her philosophy and the kind of atmosphere that Rabia represents to us, but itโs done in a digital stenography,โ he explained. โSo it kind of brings a lot of the technology of the West and the very deep philosophical aspects of the East. One is extroverted, one is introverted. ... We always consider the best moment of your life is when those two are working together, then you are at peace, you are focused. Peace reveals itself.โ
