#4089: With Sussan Deyhim and Richard Horowitz

Hear music from Sussan Deyhim and her collaboration with the artist Richard Horowitz, a media opera called “The House is Black,” based on works and life of literary icon Iranian contemporary poet Forough Farrokhzad. Deyhim and Horowitz have been collaborators for some time, with music that ranges from settings of the great mystic of 13th century Rumi’s poetry, to things more aggressively modernist with their combination of her layered voice, his layered electronics, and Middle Eastern instruments, like the ney flute.

In this work, Deyhim and Horowitz have combined a mix of poetry, film, music and storytelling, in a celebration of modernism, feminism, and of Iranian culture, and the ways in which that culture and Western culture have come together. The story of “The House is Black” is told both in English and in Farsi (of the 1960’s), where the language, although it doesn’t rhyme, still sings. It’s based on the work of Forough Farrokhzad, one of Iran’s most influential feminist poets, activists and filmmakers. “The House is Black” Media Project gets its New York Premiere tomorrow night, March 10, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.