Shūr - 2018

Shūr for violin and piano received First Prize in the Duet Composition Competition in Tehran in winter 2018, where it was premiered by violinist Bijan Sepanji and pianist Saman Shahi at University of Tehran. The work was subsequently performed in North America later that year.

The piece was composed during the wave of public protests that spread across Iran in January 2018. Its title refers both to Shūr, one of the principal dastgahs of Iranian classical music, and to the Persian word’s broader associations with fervor, intensity, and unrest.

Rather than quoting traditional material directly, the piece takes a characteristic melodic idea from the Shur dastgah and subjects it to fragmentation, repetition, interruption, and continual transformation. The violin and piano often seem to pull the material apart and reconstruct it from different directions, creating a music that moves between propulsion and suspension, clarity and instability.

In this sense, Shur is less a representation of a specific event than a response to a particular psychological atmosphere: a state in which tension, expectation, anger, and uncertainty coexist without arriving at an easy resolution.