Alireza Mortazavi and Carson Teal: Experimental Link Music Nights

The Toronto debut of Turin-based Persian avant-garde musician and composer Alireza Mortazavi on santur, in concert with local emerging multidisciplinary visual artist and experimental producer Carson Teal on electronics. Their collaboration promises rich soundscapes and mesmerising atmospheres.

Through a combination of improvisation and composition on his unique chromatic santur-piano, offering a broader range than a traditional santur, Alireza Mortazavi describes his as “a music that has visual codes… is minimal and constantly swings between form and antiform”. With recent releases with Italian Dark Companion records, Free Spirits (2022) and Hamdelaneh (2019), his “inner sense” music continues to go deeper and tear apart the layers. Born in Isfahan, Mortazavi started playing santur at an early age, studying musicology in Cremona, earning an interdisciplinary degree from Università degli Studi di Torino and now performing with distinguished musicians worldwide.

Creator of ambient, future pop, and category-defying dance music, Carson Teal interlaces rich soundscapes with elements of video projection mapping over assembled and found objects. His eponymous first record, launched in 2016, is a testament to this, strengthened by his 2019 single “Liquid Honey”. Represented by Pari Nadimi Gallery in Toronto, his multidisciplinary practice multiplies opportunities to be fully present.

Experimental Link Music Nights contemplates the Persian-Canadian experience by reinvigorating, re-exploring and re-imagining Persian traditional music within contemporary and cosmopolitan Toronto by inviting different musicians from the diaspora to collaborate and perform together. The series will explore connections between identity, culture, and musical creation with four concerts in its new season from December to March 2023.

Link Music Lab gratefully acknowledges the generous support of Canadian Heritage, Toronto Arts Council and the Ontario Arts Council.