ON THE PULSE OF MORNING

A piano concerto for Lara Downes by composer Hooshyar Khayam, in response to the 2022 IRANIAN uprising Zan, Zendegi, Azadi (Woman, Life, Freedom)

Soon after pianist Lara Downes recorded Hooshyar Khayam’s Bright Night for solo piano (coming in April 2023 on her new album Love At Last), the two artists met in Montreal, where Hooshyar has been based since leaving Iran with his young family in 2020. They instantly discovered a shared vision and mission that embraces the expression of change and progress through an instinctive and personal musical language.

In Lara’s musical explorations of the legacies of history, family, and collective memory, Hooshyar found the inspiration for a creative burst that has sustained him during a time of intense anxiety. As he witnessed the uprising in his native country in support of the fundamental rights of women, he wrote this piece for a female artist and her quest for awareness, for unity, and inclusion. Early every morning, while his two sons were still asleep, Hooshyar dedicated himself to the writing of this large-scale work for piano and orchestra that harnesses the energy of uprising and change while connecting global musical traditions through a river of peace, as expressed in Maya Angelou’s poem On the Pulse of Morning:

Across the wall of the world,
A River sings a beautiful song,
Come rest here by my side.

Each of you a bordered country,
Delicate and strangely made proud,
Yet thrusting perpetually under siege.

Yet, today I call you to my riverside,
If you will study war no more.

This piece is an audacious expression of hope for an imminent future when liberty and equality will free the hearts of people around the world to beat with the strong, steady pulse of a new morning. With an orchestration that pays tribute to George Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue as that groundbreaking work approaches its centennial, On the Pulse of Morning celebrates a global expansion of what Gershwin called a “musical kaleidoscope”. Khayam’s new work, in turn exuberant, reflective and triumphant, travels freely across the western and eastern hemispheres, bringing together the sounds of the Persian peninsula, the African and Jewish diasporas, and countless other journeys and migrations, echoing all the songs we sing - in praise, in protest and in peace - in all the places we call home.

Here on the pulse of this new day
You may have the grace to look up and out
And into your sister's eyes, into
Your brother's face, your country
And say simply
Very simply
With hope
Good morning.