SFCM to Host Showcase of Composer Mohajer

Composer Kamyar Mohajer, courtesy of Classical Music Communications

During the mid-term break the San Francisco Conservatory of Music (SFCM) will provide a venue for Pictures of the Hidden, a concert that will showcase the music of a rising talent, the young Persian composer Kamyar Mohajer. Mohajer’s training is in the Western tradition, having earned his Bachelor of Fine Arts from York University in Toronto, where he studied piano with Christina Petrowska-Quilico and Antonin Kubalek. His composition teachers have been Behzad Ranjbaran (a composer on the faculty of the Juilliard School) and Giancarlo Aquilanti (a faculty member at Stanford University and Music Director of the San Francisco Wind Ensemble). Details are somewhat sparse, but it appears that Aquilanti has at least facilitated the preparation of Mohajer’s showcase concert.

Aquilanti’s connection will be most evident in the performance of Mohajer’s woodwind quintet, which will be by members of the San Francisco Wind Ensemble. Each work on the program will feature different performers covering a diversity of genres. There will be a string quartet performed by the members of the Alexander String Quartet, violinists Zakarias Grafilo and Frederick Lifsitz, violist Paul Yarbrough, and cellist Sandy Wilson, which will be followed by a prelude for string trio played by two members of the Ives Collective, cellist Stephen Harrison and violist Susan Freier, joined by guest artist Kay Stern on violin. Pianist Karolina Rojahn will play a C major ballade and accompany soprano Raeeka Shehabi-Yaghmal in five song settings of the poetry of Hafez.

This concert will begin at 7:30 p.m. on Saturday, January 6. SFCM is located at 50 Oak Street, between Van Ness Avenue and Franklin Street, a short walk from the Van Ness Muni station. There will be no charge for admission.