Serge Rezvani aka Cyrus Bassiak
Born in Iran in 1928 to an Iranian father and Russian mother, Serge Rezvani is a prolific painter, novelist, poet, playwright and most notably, songwriter. Between the years 1955 and 1965, sometimes under the alias Cyrus Bassiak, Rezvani penned the music for several seminal films of the French new wave, among them Jules et Jim [...]
Celebration at Persepolis Book
Published by Swiss publishers JRP-Ringier and edited by Nav Haq and Elisa Kay, the book is an expansion on Michael Stevenson’s project for Basel in 2007 for which he reconstructed a guest tent from the 1971 celebration at Persepolis. For more info, see previous post on Shiraz Arts Festivals.
Iannis Xenakis — Persepolis (1971)
Persepolis is a 56-min piece of multi-channel electroacoustic music, unrelenting in its density and continuously evolving architecture. The original presentation included two lasers, 92 spotlights, and bonfires and processions of torches [...]
Iannis Xenakis - Persephassa (1969)
Back in 1968-1969, at the height of the social activism that swept through Europe and the United States, Mr. Xenakis, well-known as a revolutionary in Greece during the period of World War II and after, was something [...]
Shiraz Arts Festival
Farah Diba greets John Cage and Merce Cunningham at the 1972 festival. (Photo: Cunningham Dance Foundation Archive)
Article Abstract:
Iran in the 1970s was host to an array of electronic music and avant-garde arts. In the decade prior to the Islamic revolution, the Shiraz Arts Festival provided a showcase for composers, performers, dancers and theater directors from [...]