Glowing Review for Methuselah (In Chains of Time) World Premiere at San Diego Symphony’s Rady Shell
“Razaz has a compelling voice and refreshing command of sonority and harmony. Highly charged fragments of tonally suggestive melodies, each on the verge of zipping off into space, are yolked together and anchored in sustained drones of harmonic semi-light. Brilliant use of orchestral color and a careful shaping of foreground and background ideas create an opulent and suggestive sonic landscape. The percussion were especially captivating in her piece, with mallet instruments and auxiliary sounds played expertly and with a great advocacy of her music.”
—San Diego Tribune
BBC Music Magazine: Rising Stars
Gity was named one of BBC Music Magazine’s “Rising Stars” for her debut album, “The Strange Highway,” which came out in 2022 on Sweden’s landmark BIS Records.
—BBC Music Magazine
The Violin Channel Features “Legend of Sigh'“
The video from cellist Inbal Segev’s performance recording of Legend of Sigh was featured across all the platforms of the beloved showcase for classical music, The Violin Channel.
I Care If You Listen (Five Questions)
“If you’ve heard music by composer Gity Razaz, you know its power. Gity’s wide, sweeping sonorities are made of those especially vivid in-between colors, and her textures span the spectrum from dry, sharp staccatos to translucent washes of harmonics and overtones, all restlessly undulating from one moment to the next.”
—I Care If You Listen
Review of the World Premiere of Flowing Down the Widening Rings of Being
“This is a staggeringly beautiful piece of music: the texts, drawn from Rilke and Rumi, were sung with compelling ardor and grace by Mr. Sulayman, and the blending of the players' individual timbres creating an incandescent sound-world. I was often reminded of Britten, but this music has a deeper spirituality... and a dizzying feeling of rapture.”
—Oberon’s Grove
American Academy of Arts & Letters Prize
Gity was the proud recipient of the Andrew Imbrie Award, given by the Academy to a “composer of demonstrated artistic merit in mid-career.”
The Violin Channel & 2023 Irving M. Klein International String Competition
The Violin Channel interviews Gity about her Suite for Solo Strings — Creation of the Birds (violin), Embroidering the Earth’s Mantle (viola), Solar Music (cello), and Towards the Tower (double bass) - competition pieces for the 2023 Klein International String Competition.
—The Violin Channel
BBC Music Magazine Gives “The Strange Highway” Four Stars
“There’s an uncompromising beauty to these works by the Iranian-born American composer. The opening title work, for cello octet, is a wild, rhythmic ride, while the closing Metamorphosis for Narcissus offers some fantastic musical storytelling. Impressive.”
—BBC Music Magazine
Reviews for Debut Solo Album on BIS Records
Gity’s debut solo album for Sweden’s iconic BIS Records gained glowing, enthusiastic reviews from international publications.
“There’s an uncompromising beauty to these works by the Iranian-born American composer. The opening title work, [The Strange Highway], for cello octet, is a wild, rhythmic ride, while the closing Metamorphosis of Narcissus offers some fantastic musical storytelling. Impressive.”
—BBC Music Magazine
“The Strange Highway, a driving and energetically charged piece for cello octet [is] the highlight of the programme.”
—Gramophone
“Four out of the five pieces [on this CD] strike mc as being among the most intellectually satisfying and emotionally thrilling 21st-century music I’ve heard. It is all vigorous. tightly written, and deeply serious.”
—Fanfare
“…track after track of stark beauty, composer Gity Razaz showcases her impressive command of string instrument writing and takes us on a journey into cavernous spaces filled with unearthly sonorities and evocative, immersive story-telling.”
—I Care if You Listen
“And the piece that repays attention the most is Legend of Sigh, a 19-minute tone poem for live cello, prerecorded cello, and electronics that instantly entices the ear and doesn’t let go…we are instantly thrust into a phantasmagoric world from the first notes— Segev’s singing cello surrounded by a glowing halo of digital electronic sound, occasionally joined by prerecorded cello.…This is the pick of Razaz’s crop on the album, and it holds up over repeated hearings.”
—San Francisco Classical Voice
Concert Reviews:
“Gity Razaz’s Methuselah (In Chains of Time) received an auspicious world premiere Saturday. Razaz has a compelling voice and refreshing command of sonority and harmony. Highly charged fragments of tonally suggestive melodies, each on the verge of zipping off into space, are yolked together and anchored in sustained drones of harmonic semi-light. Brilliant use of orchestral color and a careful shaping of foreground and background ideas create an opulent and suggestive sonic landscape. The percussion were especially captivating in her piece, with mallet instruments and auxiliary sounds played expertly and with a great advocacy of her music.” —San Diego Union-Tribune
“The Metamorphosis of Narcissus, by Gity Razaz, an Iranian composer, was a world apart: a narcotic mix of dreamy French horn and clarinet calls, limpid Impressionist timbres and electronically induced expanse. Ms. Razaz’s music was ravishing and engulfing throughout…” —New York Times, “A Night of Acoustic and Electronic Exploits”
“[Flowing Down the Widening Rings of Being] is a staggeringly beautiful piece of music: the texts, drawn from Rilke and Rumi, were sung with compelling ardor and grace by Mr. Sulayman, and the blending of the players' individual timbres creating an incandescent sound-world. I was often reminded of Britten, but this music has a deeper spirituality... and a dizzying feeling of rapture.” —Oberon’s Grove
“The second half opened with remarkable music by Iranian composer Gity Razaz. In the Midst of Flux is the work of a master, albeit a young one (she was born in Teheran in 1986). A set of loosely related episodes, this music evokes her emigré family’s lost world. Skirting the dangers of mere nostalgia, she summons real memory (always unsettled and whirling) before us in all its fragmentary and jagged incompleteness. Full of gorgeous color, the piece shimmers with longing and uncertainty until a final bell-like thunderclap of sound suspends both time and memory. Breathtaking.” —San Diego Union-Tribune
“Razaz is an American composer of Iranian origin, and her exciting work, Flowing Down the Widening Rings of Being, was rightly the evening’s centerpiece. It is a song cycle that she wrote with Sulayman in mind, and the multiple sections respond to poems by Rilke and Rumi. Razaz strives to use music as the connection between inner and outer worlds, and each song resonated as both wild and communicative. At the same time, her compositional toolkit of styles was stitched together with a variety of textures that created a sensitive, ponderous quality with mesmerizing content. Throughout, one could hear the bittersweet dichotomies play out from the poets’ words via her musical settings.
“Sulayman’s performance settled quickly into an easy but impassioned style. His heavenly sustained tones were colorful and hypnotic, as if he sang with no need for oxygen, and he approached the vocal range required for Razaz’s work effortlessly. A tall, towering presence, his smile shined down on the audience, inviting and enrapturing.” —Seen and Heard International“The initiative announced on Thursday will build on those efforts, pairing each of the six composers with five ensembles. The program, which will cost at least $360,000, will be financed by the Toulmin foundation. The six composers are the British-born Anna Clyne, who works in the United States; Sarah Gibson, who is also a pianist; the Hong Kong-born Angel Lam; Gity Razaz, an Iranian American; Arlene Sierra, an American based in London; and Wang Lu, a China-born composer and pianist, who lives in Providence, R.I.” —New York Times, “New Effort Aims to Bring More Contemporary Music to Orchestras”
“Gity Razaz is a unique composer. Her Middle-Eastern roots have merged with her Western sensibilities to produce music that is both original and startling. She is on her way to becoming a major force in contemporary music.” —John Corigliano
“..immersed in Gity Razaz’s mesmeric new commission Mother” —The Arts Desk
“…orchestral masterpiece Mother by Gity Razaz” —Afegames
“Mother, by the Iranian-born Gity Razaz, an attractive piece about climate change…” —The Guardian
“Tonally and lyrically inventive, pleasingly melodic, emotional but firmly in control of its passions.” —Blogcritics
“Skillfully composed and sophisticated in its orchestration…” —SoundWordSigh
Select Articles:
Commissioning Project Announcement, “New Effort Aims to Bring More Contemporary Music to Orchestras,” by The New York Times
Interview Article, “Five Questions to Gity Razaz (Composer),” by I Care If You Listen
Interview article, “Composer Gity Razaz on Her Suite for Solo String Instruments,” by The Violin Channel
Interview article, “Uprooting and Rebuilding,” by Fifteen Questions
Interview and Podcast, “Cruising Down the Strange Highway of Life,” by Classical Post
Interview article, “5 Questions to Gity Razaz,” by I Care if You Listen
Album review, “Gity Razaz: The Strange Highway,” by Classical Modern Gate
Radio Interview and Podcast, “Exploring the unexplainable with composer Gity Razaz,” by Sound Currents
Album review, “Gity Razaz: The Strange Highway,” by Textura
Album review, “Gity Razaz Releases Evocative and Profound Debut Album, The Strange Highway,” by I Care if You Listen
Interview article, “Gity Razaz: ‘The Emotional Map’ of a Composer’s Voice,” by Thought Catalog
Video interview, “Exclusive: Gity Razaz & Saad Haddad on ACO Underground’s ‘Eastern Wind Concert’,”
by ClassicaliteArticle and interview, “A Concert Hall for New Music in Williamsburg,” by Wall Street Journal
Album review, “Jeffrey Zeigler’s ‘Something of Life’ at Le Poisson Rouge,” by Feast of Music
Article on National Sawdust’s inaugural season, by Brooklyn Vegan
