Staff Profile

Mariam Rezaei is a multi-award winning composer, turntablist and performer.  She previously led experimental arts project TOPH, TUSK FRINGE and TUSK NORTH, and in November 2022, she received the Paul Hamlyn Foundation #AwardsForArtists, in recognition of her contribution to music composition.

Her music has recently been described as ‘genuinely ground-breaking’ (London Jazz News 2022) and ‘high-velocity sonic surrealism’ (4* The Guardian 2022). Recent release ‘BOWN’ (Heat Crimes) charted no.6 in Wire Magazine and no10 in The Quietus’ ‘Albums Of The Year 2023’, was album of the week in The Quietus and is described as ‘harnessing extreme technical prowess - phenomenal stuff’ by Boomkat.

Recent performances include Turntable Trio with Evicshen and Maria Chávez at Counterflows Festival 2023 (Glasgow)/ REWIRE 2023(Den Haag), soloist with Frankfurt Radio Orchestra for the closing concert at IM Darmstadt 2023, soloist with London Sinfonietta at HCMF 2023 and Taipei Biennial 2023 in a quartet with Dj Sniff, Rex Chen and Dj SlowPitchSound.

I am an artist of national and international standing and recognition, whose innovative work for turntables has been described as ‘genuinely ground breaking’ (London Jazz News, 2022). I have an exceptional record of high quality outputs, including several commissions of major works for turntablism in the last 5-year period.

Evidence of my standing at international level in my discipline is reflected in my recent academic prize, the highly prestigious Paul Hamlyn Foundation ‘Awards for Artists’, chosen by nomination only, in recognition of outstanding contribution to new composition in turntablism (https://www.phf.org.uk/artist/mariam-rezaei).

Epiphanies (published Wire Magazine Jan/Feb 2024)

In 2010, I was commissioned by Rhodri Davies, John Tilbury and Michael Duch to write a new piece to premiere at HCMF, alongside new works by Ben Patterson, Lene Grenager and Christian Wolff. I was in the middle of my PhD journey, having already written a number of very trite and corny pieces for turntables I was really unhappy with, so I quibbled between writing for instrumental trio or including myself on turntables as a quartet.  At the time, I was taking instrumental lessons for Iranian santoor and setar where I was excited, enjoying melodies, bending pitches and retuning strings whilst learning about ‘dastgah’. Though I’d listened to many hours of improvised Iranian music at home, learning to play this music was mind-bending. Melodies would ascend in one particular tuning and descend in another, with these long, incredible melismatic flourishes. There were little symbols across the music that indicated a change, but I didn’t know what I could change to or why. Eventually, my tutor introduced me to Hormoz Farhat’s book ‘The Dastgah Concept in Persian Music’. As an avid live music fan, reading a book on music theory was the last thing on my mind, until I eventually got too embarrassed about asking my tutor so many questions so I just had to sit down and read it. Turned out, dastgah isn’t just a line of notes running up and down the piano keyboard like G major or E minor. There are cadences, intervals, sequential patterns like steps or chromaticism, and different pivots, where you can change key or sustain.  There are tuning inflections based on where the dastgah is geographically learned, and particular dastgah are associated with occasions likes celebrations, funerals, instruments or style of music.  These ‘dastgah’ weren’t scales at all, they were melodies leaping off the pages with deep improv that took you into different dimensions, rhythms, tonal centres and moods. My mind was blown, I mean, we’re talking leaning and bending into sexy quarter and three-quarter flats and sharps ALL THE TIME. I was transfixed. I already had some rough sketches for harp, double bass and piano using dastgah Esfahan, which eventually became the premiered piece, ‘ESFA’, by Davies, Tilbury and Duch at HCMF 2010.  But the key part to this work came after the trio premiere, where I sat down and added in the turntable part. In the next few sessions where I played with bending pitches and speeding up records, I made some of the most significant findings that I’m still working on today.

Turntables are made for quarter pitches and glissandi.  Why the hell this had not occurred to me sooner is beyond me, but I soon wrote my first, simple quartet for turntables by solo performer.  I initially started using looped sustained double bass and cello pitches which just sounded boring. I was hellbent on this idea as a technique, so I started playing with different sounds. When I tried the same piece with two different sine tones, it sounded like Alvin Lucier on the decks with tonnes of beatings bouncing between the speakers! BOOM! I then expanded this concept into ‘surreal turntablism’ where I work with samples on turntables to play in a way that the real-life instrument simply could not, for example, sliding voices or organs across several octaves.

The Technics SL-1200/1210 turntables generally have a +/-8% pitch adjustment over 33 1/3 and 45 rpm, so when playing a looped, sustained pitch, the turntable can achieve 6 clear tones/10 semitones.  In order to bend a little higher or lower than those given pitches, I decided to push and pull the deck manually, that is with the motor turned off. I remembered how Mix Master Mike once practiced the ‘lazer’ skratch on decks without electricity, resulting in him inventing the ‘phaser’ skratch. The difference between the lazer and phaser being that the platter slows down at different speeds, thus, with markedly different pitches. This then also means that the turntables will push forward at a different speed and play different pitches too. I took this technique and elaborated on it much more, calling it ‘Turntables Synths’ and using it in pieces like ‘iCon’, and my recent collaboration with Matthew Shlomowitz, ‘6 Scenes for Turntables and Orchestra’ premiered at Internationales Musikinstitut Darmstadt 2023.

I continued to return to Farhat’s book to help me consider ideas in harmonic language until I then began to challenge myself with a piece called ‘SADTITZZZ’. For all I wanted to prove that I could make the turntable be free, it was from Farhat’s explanations about how notes function, harmonic pivots (‘moteghayyer’) and my understanding of two pitches with the function to ‘stop’ (the ‘ist’, a stop but not the ending and the ‘finalis’, a final stop in the music), found in each dastgah. It gave me a framework that allowed me to expand my compositional ideas with the same sample on two decks, but with the goal for them to work independently and to end differently.  In trying to achieve this, I suddenly used every tool in my box and worked through tonal beatjuggles (repitching two turntables in combination with rewinding records to repeat a musical phrase), tonal drumming (repitching percussive sounds for a new tuning on one turntable), midi button retriggering and repitching samples with smaller loops to form sustained pitches, all done live and explicitly in front of the audience, in combination with switching the turntable motors on and off. Who said turntablism was about using only one skill set at a time? 

Turntable Composition:

SKEEN: This album is a further development of the compositional and turntablist techniques found in BLUD (2019). The music pushes into sonic territories that are well established with other electronic instruments, however, are new ground for turntable composition. The rigour of the turntablist and flexible compositional structures are now falling in to a new, grey area where established ideas are blurred with the caveat that the whole work is to be performed live and in one take. This concept also tackles the materialist qualities of using samples, vinyl, bearing witness as a ritual of the composition and what the new resulting outcome of the composition is valued as.

The work contributes new learning, sound worlds, techniques and ideas of where and how to compose where can a performer improvise within a new compositional framework. This new idea is now coming to light whilst having been slowly established through recent turntable compositions.  This compositional methodology and technique has a working title of ‘Suspension’, an area of composition I have developed further.

Mariam Rezaei talks with Derek Walmsley, Wire Magazine for Tusk Festival 2019.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N75nqgdHhBQ&t=1s

My professional expertise and innovation informs my university teaching. The most clear example of this has been my delivery of an innovative DJ Skills and Turntablism undergraduate course, MUS2016.  Unique in its perspective, the hybrid course brings together performance skills in vinyl and digital djing skills with creative composition.  Most DJ courses offered are limited to teaching only DJing beatmatching with digital kit or CDJs. Reflective of my personal research achievements, this unique course is world-leading in innovative turntable composition pedagogy. This teaching has also informed my teaching on Composing with Technologies MUS2048, where turntable composition was included with the module when MUS2016 was not able to be delivered in 2021-22 academic year. My teaching of this course led directly to my external examining at Leeds Conservatoire, where I oversee two electronic music foundation degrees, including two DJing courses.

My teaching is informed by my professional practice in free music and experimental new music aesthetics. Co-leading MUS2071 Jazz Today: Tomorrow Is The Question, and MUS2048 Free Music Practicem includes my research, interviews and writing for Wire Magazine, my upcoming book and professional experiences inform the innovative pedagogy of these two new music courses.  

In recognition of my innovations in turntable composition, I have been invited to give guest lectures at institutions and conferences including Birmingham Conservatoire (2022), Leeds Conservatoire (2021), SPARC, City University of London (2019), and Goldsmiths, University of London (2021). For the GLEAM conference at Glasgow University (2022), I undertook an artist residency and a gave a keynote performance. I presented a commissioned video of online TV for RMA, Newcastle University (2021), and gave a commissioned live performance at RMA, Durham University (2022). 

Alongside my creative practice outputs, I also produce scholarly outputs in peer-reviewed journals. Continuing publication of sole or jointly authored articles or papers in well-regarded refereed journals over a period of at least five years, together comprising a substantial corpus, I have been invited to contribute to two peer reviewed journals: ‘The 42 Mirrors of Narcissus, Artist Statement’, for Echo, Orpheus Insituut Journal, 20^th November 2020, and ‘The Old Police House’, with Adam Denton for Contemporary Music Review, submitted 5^th March 2022.

• Musical Compositions

  • Rezaei M. The Sound of Hate. . Edited by Marhaug L. Ekko Fesitval 2021, Norway: Ekko Fesitval 2021, Norway, 2021.
  • Rezaei M. The Old Police House, Gateshead. . 2020. Submitted.
  • Rezaei M. SKEEN. . Bandcamp: Fractal Meat Cuts, 2020.
  • Rezaei M. Wolf's Tail. . Edited by Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival (HCMF//). 2019.
  • Rezaei M. The 42 Mirrors Of Narcissus. . Edited by TUSK Festival, 2019. 2019.
  • Rezaei M. iCon. . Edited by SPARC Symposium 2019. City, University of London. Commissioned by Claudia Molitor. 2019.
  • Rezaei M. BLUD. . Bandcamp and physical format, Cassette, 2019.
  • Rezaei M. TOP/// For Four Turntables, Conductor and Ensemble Modern. . Cresc Festival / Tectonics Mosaic, Wiesbaden, Germany, 2017, 2017.