Tag Archives: Dastgah Pieces

Dastgah Piece #3 by Rich Perks

In July 2010 I took part in a recording session of a piece by Rich Perks, a current PhD student at Brunel, in which he was seeking a fusion of disparate musical disciplines. He created a piece (the first in a series) where an interpretation of the traditional Persian Dastgah form was accompanied by sounds and players from more distinctly western traditions.

What was really interesting for me whilst involved in this project was the ease with which the Tar, Daf, Clarinet and Electronics meshed together to create a coherent result. This project is also part of a larger exploration for Rich into ways of scoring for instruments such as live electronics where the traditional techniques do not apply. I picked the sound sources and processing techniques, but the gestures and textures were very much dictated by Rich through the score. Hopefully he’ll allow me to post up a page or two of one of his scores sometime soon!

So, below is a recording of this first session. I believe there’s another on the way so I’ll post a second recording on here when it lands in my inbox.


Performed by:
Ali Nourbakhsh – Daf & Tombak
Tom Jackson – Clarinet
Payam Iranmanesh Zarandi – Tar
Sandy Finlayson – Electronics/Samples