Mohammad Reza Shadjarian

A socially conscious musical citizen of the world, Reza Khan has a history of blazing fresh trails and finding unique ways to redefine what is possible in contemporary jazz. Helping us navigate our way through the darkness and steep challenges of the past year, Khan graces us with an empowering way forward along a fascinating Imaginary Road. Khan writes, “There are moments where I was naturally drawn between Indian and Spanish styles which make the project even more interesting. As I am taking this Imaginary Road, embarking on a journey, life is still quite exploratory and full of experiments.”

Unsurprisingly for an artist as prolific and strident as Bryn Jones was, the flood of material he sent to labels and compatriots was not always carefully categorized. Also, sometimes he would be so eager to release material that if things didn’t happen fast enough he’d just send in another tape. And that circumstance is how you wind up with a fascinating oddity like Mohammad Ali Jinnah.

Award-winning composer Reza Vali is a native of Iran but is now based in the United States after studies in Europe. Vali’s distinctive cross-cultural style is founded in a quiet rebellion that saw him return to his Persian musical heritage. Following the dazzling concert opener Ravân, Vali has taken a text by 13th-century poet and mystic, Rumi, two traditional texts, and words by Vali himself, to create the moving cycle The Being of Love, with each song evoking a different aspect of love. Isfahan uses Persian modes and forms, and is among Vali’s most striking microtonal works, pushing the orchestra beyond its usual twelve-note sound-world in an exciting way.

Deben Bhattacharya (1921–2001) was a field recordist, poet, filmmaker, musicologist and amateur ethnomusicologist, based in Calcutta and Paris. Highly influential, it would not be too bold a stretch to say that his work shaped how we listen to the world: he produced a vast number of LPs, CDs, videos and radio shows of traditional music from India, Asia, Africa, the Middle East, and Europe from 1953 until his death in 2001.