Review by Manan Luthra

Community, food and culture are undoubtedly interconnected. A community’s food defines them, offering profound insights into their history and identity. Sharing, or preparing, a meal with others is therefore an intimate experience, bringing people with different practices, rituals and customs together and uniting them through a simple activity.

Interview by Maddy Briggs

“[That] idea or a feeling that’s so abstract you can’t put it into words, and then turning it into sound. When words fall short, music lets me express things I couldn’t otherwise communicate. For me, composing is about bridging that gap. It’s a challenge, but also a deeply rewarding way to connect with people on an emotional level.”

Work of the Year: Dramatic

A conceptually individual, imaginative and moving work of theatre. The panel noted that the musical score was a timeline of musical instructions that balanced prescriptive detail with interpretive freedom, promoting the relational in music-making and performance.

Interviewed by Andrew Ford -The Music show

Iranian composer and pianist Shervin Mirzeinali’s opera Panbe Zan recreates the process of preparing cotton to be turned into cloth, featuring traditional Persian music interleaved with the rhythms and timbres of the Panbe Zani’s ritual. He’s also set to open the inaugural Iranian Music Festival in Sydney, and brings in the co-founder and setar player Ehsan Kachooei to demonstrate some of the music the audience will get to hear at the Festival.

Review by Manan Luthra

Nazri, conceived by Sydney-based Iranian musician Dr Shervin Mirzeinali, celebrates this experience. Part music and part dance, it is inspired by the Persian tradition of cooking and sharing food. Featuring three acclaimed musicians from different genres and a contemporary dancer, and using kitchen items and ingredients to create sound, the show depicts cooking both as a physical act for sustenance and a unifying one.

Interviewed by Elissa Blake

Shervin Mirzeinali, 30, a doctoral student at Sydney Conservatorium of Music, has won one of the most prestigious music awards in the Australian music industry, Work of the Year (Dramatic) from APRA AMCOS. His award-winning composition, Panbe Zan, was the centrepiece of his doctoral portfolio supervised by composer Damien Ricketson, who said he’d “never seen anything like it in my time at the Con”.

Review by Kiri Zakinthinos

Billed as a “modern Persian opera”, the work draws heavily from Mirzeinali’s Iranian heritage, both musically and thematically. Cotton beating, a now-obsolete Iranian tradition, was performed in preparation for the New Year. With Nowruz just a day away, the timing of this premiere seems a mindful and generous choice.

In conversation with Raghav Handa

In this episode, artists Shervin Mirzeinali and Raghav Handa discuss how heritageshows up in their work, and they play a game of chance where they will choose between speaking on love, sex, or religion.

Please note, this episode discusses ideas and thoughts on the topic of sex.