Dear friendos,

It’s been a while since I sent a newsletter, and I keep meaning to do so, wanting to encapsulate more of what’s been going on, and to recap some of the fun adventures I’ve been having. I’m giving up on that, because it’s delaying my ability to get this going. I initially wrote this on the 3rd of January and it’s taken me this long to send it. Here’s to a year of grace with the calendar.

2024 was a really big year. My musical practice changed so much with the trip to CCRMA, where I got to make some beautiful works in collaboration with composers there, and to have the brilliant Sasha Leitman prototype the Table Floors, a portable new friend to the Floors, for me. I’m hoping I can continue to build on some of the pieces I made there, with Celeste Betancur, Luna Valentin, and Nick Shaheed, later this year - so many works get a first development but don’t get the chance to expand beyond that and I’m really keen to keep going with some pieces that have just started to be.

A new instrument is a wonderful feeling. Transferring techniques, finding new layers within a performance language, and relating to sound anew are all built into that process. The Floors feel deeply connected to my expression, and I’ve found so much of a clearer of the trace of my relationship with this instrument from using other ones. My limbs feel electric when I play other things, and even when just moving my hands and shoulders, I feel the placement of my weight and pressure in my legs. I know my acoustic musician friends feel this too, but I haven’t talked to the community of electric sound dwellers enough about this.

I am excited to share something at the start of this year with you all, which is my first co-authored journal article! Big milestone for this early career researcher!! I worked on this paper from a flurry of ideas and chats with Sasha Leitman, and it describes the connection built with digital instruments, and tries to tackle some of the misunderstandings of what comes in working with these instruments. You can read Tacit Engagement and Digital Musical Instruments here.

There are a bunch of other bits of writing, solo and co-authored, etc. in submission, draft and idea mode, and I’m so so keen to keep working on them. It feels like a year of getting out some of the words that have been swimming in my mind.

Last year was a big year of awesome gigs. I played fewer but super fun concerts. It was an honour to be asked to take past in Jaslyn Robertson’s experimental chamber opera Knots That Bind. Jassy is a razor-sharp scholar, beautiful composer of stunning sound, and a real gem in the scene. I’ve loved improvising alongside her at Make it up club, and I am looking forward to working with her again. The show at Axon was fun and interesting, and meeting Liz, Jane and finalllllly getting to share a stage with percussionist extraordinaire Niki Johnson was a real treat.

My floors + contact mic life has been fun, but the table floors, like the evolution of mega fauna into wee tiny plants, has brought a particular richness of action sounds to my life. I play a lot of feedback sounds, and having a whole new safer and more controllable way to interact with feedback is so enlivening.

Speaking of feedback, I was SO STOKED to play at Domestic Bliss (concert series by Chloe Sobek, Aviva Endean, Olivia Davies). I think that’s the only gig I can think of (maybe MIUC with Jassy?) that I played feedback and contact sounds only. Feedback - feedback - feedback - this beautiful phenomenon. I hope to play with it for many more moons. Another mega fun adventure in sound was taking part in the Cage Variations concert with Decibel, at Tempo Rubato, featuring musicians from multiple different stages of their career, hearing all the variations, and having a gorgeous adventure. Big kudos to Cat Hope for making that big logistical event happen, and what a thrill to be able to take part in it. That one I’m keeping in the fuzzy wuzzies folder. I’ll always hear in my mind the duo between Nicole Canham on bass clarinet and Stuart James on electronics, with rolling beautiful feedback.
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i’m trying for a year of fewer, but concentrated projects. Reading Andrea Keller’s beautiful newsletter, I’m inspired to take a bit of space for my life this year, and though planning some ambitious projects, I want to be more present for the days, as they come and as they go. Living in Australia for half my life now, I feel a strange sense of being at home not in place, but with people. I have a lot of thinking to do about what being an expat means or feels like, and I know it’s not the same for everyone. I’ve been really lucky to have found family in Adelaide, Melbourne and outside of Australia. The community in sound I surround myself with has done a lot for my musicality, but I find a focus in solitude and a deeply enriching expanse in isolation. I never thought it’d be like this.

I’m just about done making a new record that I can’t wait to share, and am writing some good stuff I’ll be sending in this newsletter. Here’s to a year of newsletters sent when people can do them, read when people want to read them, and more opportunities for entanglement with the world for everyone.

With love,
Iran

p.s. real salty i can't remove this branding from below -

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