Mirzazadeh Saeed / Ueda - Rita Ueda: Someone Out There is Praying for Peace (Let Us Not Be the Reason)

The poetic dimension of the three pieces in this album is certainly the listening experience. The twoscores that "compose" the music (two because the first and third pieces use the same one) are nothingmore than a framework: a very limited number of directions given to the musicians and the conductor,mostly consisting of short melodic or harmonic fragments positioned in boxes (what is calledRahmen-Notation in German) that extend for the entire duration of a section.To bring a piece to life, each performer must perceive what the others are playing, in a relationshipof independence-dependence. This is because the composer expressly requests that each musicianperforms any melodic fragment, whenever they wish, however they wish, and in whatever order theywish, thus in a context of absolute autonomy. At the same time, this fragment is performed alongsideother fragments played by other musicians, and it relates to them, creating an interconnectednessamong the parts involved. This is most likely the attitude that Rita Ueda invites us to adopt, directingour attention and perception towards it. A choice of sharing also suggested by the meeting of threedifferent musical cultures, represented in these pieces by the solo instruments, each coming from adifferent musical tradition, alongside the traditional Western orchestra: the Persian tar, the Chineseguzheng, and the Japanese sho.