KELARIZ KESHAVARZ, Meditation–Tomorrow: Solo Flute Music of Alireza Mashayekhi

Alireza Mashayekhi has spent more than six decades challenging the boundaries between Iranian musical traditions, Western modernism and experimental sound, but on Meditation–Tomorrow, his ideas are distilled to their most intimate form: a single flute, played with astonishing versatility by Iranian-American virtuoso Kelariz Keshavarz.

Across three works, Keshavarz reveals just how expansive the unaccompanied flute can become, moving from breathy, fragile passages and resonant sustained tones to piercing upper-register attacks, percussive articulations, rapid-fire figures and an astonishing array of extended techniques. The instrument can sound intimate one moment and almost orchestral the next, with silence and space becoming as important as the notes themselves. Her performance constantly balances delicacy against intensity, lyricism against abstraction, and moments of stillness against passages that seem to fracture and rebuild themselves in real time.

It is a demanding repertoire, but Keshavarz gives it shape, momentum and a palpable sense of discovery, allowing Mashayekhi’s philosophical ideas about memory, identity, time and transformation to emerge through sound rather than explanation. Across the album, Iranian musical identity, Western modernism and fearless contemporary experimentation constantly intersect.

Mashayekhi, born in Tehran in 1940, has spent more than six decades developing a compositional philosophy rooted in the meeting of Iranian and Western musical thought. His career has encompassed atonal music, electronic and computer music, works directly inspired by Iranian traditions and a broader multicultural approach he calls “Meta-X.” Yet the three works gathered here demonstrate that his expansive ideas can be communicated with striking personal immediacy. Rather than surrounding the flute with an orchestra or electronic apparatus, he places the entire expressive weight of the work on a single performer, making every breath, articulation, vibration and quietude part of the musical vocabulary.

Keshavarz is an especially compelling interpreter for this repertoire. An internationally acclaimed flutist, educator, sound artist and improviser, she has devoted much of her career to expanding contemporary flute repertoire, most notably through her Iranian New Waves project, which has commissioned, performed and recorded more than fifty works by Iranian composers. Her familiarity with the musical and cultural territory behind Mashayekhi’s work gives these performances a sense of commitment that goes well beyond technical command. She approaches the flute as a limitless sonic instrument, moving fluidly between traditional melodic beauty and extended techniques that can make the instrument whisper, flutter, crackle, hum and seemingly speak.

The album opens with the expansive title work, “Meditation–Tomorrow,” composed in 2002 and inspired by French writer André Gide and Mashayekhi’s own reflections on memory, identity and the search for meaning across time. From its opening rush of wind-like flute sound, the piece establishes an atmosphere of spacious uncertainty. Long tones trail off before sharply articulated high notes interrupt the calm. At times Keshavarz’s flute seems almost accompanied by an unseen human voice, with breathy lower-register sounds creating the impression of humming beneath the melodic surface.

Kelariz Keshavarz

As the 16-minute work develops, Mashayekhi continually shifts the instrument’s personality. Circular breathing produces an almost uninterrupted stream of sound, while sustained high notes rise into piercing razor-edged accents and then dissolve into airy fluttering. Bird-like figures emerge from rapid upper-register passages, followed by darker, lower-toned meditations. Elsewhere, percussive articulations make the flute sound almost like a drum or another piece of percussion. These contrasts never feel like effects added for novelty; they become essential parts of the composition’s expressive vocabulary.

Keshavarz’s performance is particularly impressive in the way she moves between these extremes without disrupting the work’s larger contemplative character. A sudden high-register “hit” can feel like a wall interrupting a dream, while a breathy passage immediately afterward restores a sense of open space. Near the conclusion, rapid upper-register flourishes mingle with darker low-register tones that again suggest a human vocal presence. The result is a meditation that never settles into a single state of mind. Its very restlessness becomes the point.

Mashayekhi’s seven-part “Scheherazade’s Memories,” composed in 2023, expands this exploration into a more narrative realm. Drawing upon the legendary storyteller while moving beyond the familiar tale, the cycle becomes a meditation on memory, freedom, captivity, resistance and love. Each miniature possesses its own personality, yet the seven sections feel connected by a persistent sense of searching.

The opening movement moves between dreamy mid-register phrases and reverberant upper notes that seem continually to reach beyond their immediate surroundings. The second becomes more free-spirited, with dancing high tones suggesting a bird taking flight before descending into gentler territory. In the third, whimsical runs and colorful sonority give way to slower, more contemplative passages, creating the feeling of a storyteller moving between memories.

Alireza Mashayekhi

The expansive fourth movement perhaps best demonstrates Keshavarz’s command of Mashayekhi’s extended vocabulary. Peppery mid-register figures accelerate beneath extreme upper-register notes, trills and circular-breathing passages. At several points, the flute seems to soar toward an almost unreachable height before returning to earth. The fifth section provides a striking contrast, moving between vibrant high-register dancing and slower, soothing meditation. The sixth introduces darker tones, deliberate pauses and passages of tension before returning to more buoyant tremolos. The final movement gathers many of these qualities together, balancing long, shimmering phrases against brief bursts of faster activity while maintaining a calm center.

The album concludes with “Circa,” also composed in 2023, and its sparse four-and-a-half-minute landscape feels almost like an existential coda. Here, the spaces between notes become especially important. Mid-register phrases emerge, breathe and disappear, with Keshavarz’s audible breaths becoming part of the piece itself. Higher tones occasionally rise from the quieter foundation, suggesting an attempt to reach toward something just beyond grasp. The final section gathers greater force, bringing deep low notes into dialogue with dynamic upper-register figures before ending decisively.

Throughout Meditation–Tomorrow, Mashayekhi and Keshavarz reveal how much expressive possibility exists within a single flute when conventional expectations are removed. The music can be playful one moment, searching the next, then suddenly stark, mysterious or intensely concentrated. Ultimately, this is both a portrait of Mashayekhi’s restless multicultural imagination and a showcase for Keshavarz’s extraordinary ability to inhabit it. She does not simply perform these works; she seems to explore them from within, finding new shades of sound in every register – ultimately creating an intimate journey through memory, identity, time and possibility, one in which a single instrument proves capable of containing an entire world.