Tunsā I

Premiered April 15, 2026 on a Sonology Discussion Concert at the Conservatoriumzaal in Amare, The Hague, NL on an octophonic speaker array.

Duration: 9:53

Year of composition: 2026

Written in Collaboration with: Sina M Fard (for the project ābirūn)

Program Note: ābirūn created Tunsā on the Sonology Voltage Control Studio's massive modular synthesizer by dwelling with, responding to, and then splintering the responses to a recording of Mahmoud Darwish reading his poem "تُ ْنسى، كأنك لم تكن " (“You’ll Be Forgotten, As If You Never Were”). This is music acting as counter-transfiguration, undoing the work of vocabulary: in the poem, vocabulary has the power to govern and freely transfigure reality; in the music, the crystalline contour of the poem is unraveled into ungovernable, blurred shapes that reject any claim to power. While working on this project the members of ābirūn grappled with the anguish of war breaking out between their countries and a sinking fear of having arrived too late into a tragic narrative to change it. Together they reached for the hope that future generations may, one day, be able to forget the vocabularies of exile and dehumanization.