Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
Purchasable with gift card
$1CAD or more
about
From the composer:
Colour of Freedom (رنگ آزادی) was my response to the 2009 uprising in Iran, whereby people marching for their most basic human rights were trampled under the boots of tyranny. Ten years later, as I prepare to release this track, it finds new meaning in the wake of a new wave of women-led protests against the Iranian government. I, alongside Iranians worldwide, am heartbroken over the death of Mahsa Amini, Nika Shakarami, Sarina Esmailzadeh, and hundreds of others, many of them children and teenagers, who are losing their lives in pursuit of their human rights, and in yearning for a free Iran!
This piece is dear to my heart for more reasons than I can count here. I would like to thank Amir Haghighi and Timothy Corlis for their artistic contributions to the shaping of this piece, and the Vancouver Peace Choir, for breathing life into it. I would also like to thank Marina Nemat for her beautiful poetry, which shaped and inspired the music.
lyrics
English Poetry (by Marina Nemat):
The streets of Tehran Cannot remember the colour of freedom,
For even the pavement of alleyways
Is crimson red.
Freedom is the colour of water, And it dripped through our fingers
Till all that was left was thirst.
But seeds of light Remain in the depths of darkness
And will grow when droplets of hope
Find their way through layers of cruelty.
Sunlight carries the psalm of the sky
Through an Angel,
His transparent hands clenched in prayer,
Concealed, yet in plain view.
Iran was not meant to be
The valley of the shadow of death.
I know that hope will grow Into an eternal ocean,
And it will dance in Tehran
In the pink clouds of sunrise,
Its life the symphony of our voices
Witnessing the birth of a magnificent light.
Persian Poetry (by Baba Taher - trans. Iman Habibi):
غمم بیحد و دردم بی شماره
فغان کاین درد مو درمان نداره
خداوندا ندونه ناصح مو
که فریاد دلم بیاختیاره
My sorrows plenty, and my pains countless
Alas, there is no remedy to my pain
oh God, my companion doesn’t know
That my sobs are involuntary
دلی نازک به سان شیشه دیرم
اگر آهی کشم اندیشه دیرم
سرشکم گر بود خونین عجب نیست
مو آن نخلم که در خون ریشه دیرم
I have a heart, fragile as glass
My sighs are rooted in my thoughts
It is no wonder that my tears are of blood
I am that palm tree rooted in blood
بیا تا دست ازین عالم بداریم
بیا تا پای دل از گل برآریم
بیا تا بردباری پیشه سازیم
بیا تا تخم نیکوئی بکاریم
Let's give up the worldly matters
Let's take the heart out of the mud
Let's practice patience
Let's spread the seeds of beneficence
credits
released October 25, 2022
Released by: New Classics Records
Composer: Iman Habibi
Performing Ensemble: Vancouver Peace Choir
Soloist: Amir Haghighi
Director: Timothy Corlis
Poetry: Marina Nemat (English), Baba Taher (Persian)
Recording Engineer: David Simpson
Recording Production: Liz Hammel
Project Production and Editing: Timothy Corlis
Mastering: Pouya Hamidi
Iman Habibi, D.M.A. (Michigan) is an Iranian-Canadian composer and pianist, and co-founder of the piano duo ensemble, Piano
Pinnacle.
He has received commissions from The Philadelphia, Boston Symphony, and Toronto Symphony Orchestras, is a 2022 laureate of the Azrieli Music Prizes, and a recipient of dozens of international music awards....more
There’s a quiet beauty to this remix album of compositions by Michael Vincent Waller, with contributions from JLin, Prefuse 73, & more. Bandcamp New & Notable Apr 1, 2024
Violinist Johnny Gandelsman commissioned work from a wide variety of composers for this complex and diverse portrait of the U.S. Bandcamp New & Notable Jul 5, 2022