Join the UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music for an evening of Original Narrative, Poetry, and Music in English and Armenian by Naveed Perkins. Solo Vocalists Sofia Dell’Agostino (Soprano) and Leland Smith (Bass-Baritone) will be joined by the renowned Iranshahr Orchestra under the direction of Dr. Shahab Paranj to premiere this contemporary work. This world premiere performance is co-sponsored by the Armenian Music Program and the Gramian-Emrani Center for Iranian Music.
About the Program:
Heaven’s Garden exists through the persistence of memory, my memory, and both my lived and yet lived experiences. Started on November 21st 2023, Heaven’s Garden was born from an unrelenting knowing, a sense of impossible empathy, and something deeply engrained within myself as part of my artistic expression. This work presents as one long moment of honesty, a flower pot continually watered day after day, which has remained unobstructed by life and its impermanence, yet entirely moved and transformed by those very things. Inspired and compelled following events of the Armenian Genocide, the narrative of Heaven’s Garden draws on a deeply personal message of tragedy and hope, of what a child must have experienced to be alone in the dead of night, as our lives and memories begin in childhood, and continue to shape us so long as we live. Our story begins with a child who is walking through the darkness in the dead of night, alone and crying, when he stumbles upon a campfire. At the campfire is an elder who himself is sitting alone, and who takes note of the silently crying child. He beckons the child to sit down, and begins to console him, for only he knows what must have happened to bring him there. As he speaks with the child, he lulls him to sleep where the child dreams of a garden, Heaven’s Garden, which tells the story of those who were taken and never returned.