Old First Concerts presents violinist Basma Edrees and pianist Ava Nazar in a concert featuring music of the contemporary Iranian composer, Reza Vali. As a young student at the Tehran conservatory, Vali had read about a Hungarian composer by the name of Bela Bartok who had collected Hungarian folk music using it as a source of inspiration for his works. Vali liked the idea and began collecting Persian folk music himself! During the last year of his studies in Vienna, he started using the folk music he had collected as a basis for his modern compositions. Nick named the Persian Bartok, Reza Vali is considered one of today's leading exponents of using folk songs as a basis for composing contemporary music. This practice will be featured in the first piece on the program entitled Love Drunk (Folk Songs, Set No.16B). Alongside Vali’s works, the concert will feature a sonata by Johannes Brahms who is one of Vali's favorite composers. In fact, Vali had written the “Three romantic songs” featured on this program as an homage to Brahms with the last movement of this work entitled Tango Johannes. Having mentioned Tango, we just can't leave you without a piece by the legendary Astor Piazzolla. With "Le Grand Tango", we hope to end our concert with a tribute to Piazzolla who introduced us to the beautiful, rich world of Argentinian Tango.

This concert can be attended both in person and virtually.

For tickets and live stream link please visit: https://www.oldfirstconcerts.org/performance/basma-edrees-ava-nazar-sunday-july-17-at-4-pm/