"The extraordinary Sussan Deyhim, a computer age coloratura, has conquered unimagined realms." —Los Angeles Times

"Sussan Deyhim creates thrilling music that sounds in the ear long after you have left the show."
—New York Times

WHAT: Panoramic: Women of The World-A Musical Tribute That Crosses Time And Continents
WHERE: The Broad Stage, 1310 11th Street, Santa Monica, CA 90405 (at the corner of 11th Street and Santa Monica Blvd.).
WHEN: Saturday, September 11th at 7:30 pm
TICKETS: $20 - $75. VIP Tickets are available for $100 and includes intermission vouchers. Parking is FREE.
When Iran's Green Movement erupted in headlines across the globe, Bono's U2 chose Sussan to compose and sing the lead-in music for their "Green Ring" performance of Bloody Sunday in support of the Iranian election protests that is the centerpiece of their current 360 WORLD TOUR. U2 along with a large and hip international audience including Iranians inside and outside of Iran consider Sussan Deyhim to be the most musically profound and politically engaged female vocalist/composer/activist of her generation. Buy tix at https://www.choicesecure03.net/mainapp/eventschedule.aspx?Clientid=SMC

Her concert at the Broad Stage, coming as it does on 9/11 is especially important both on a musical and a sociopolitical level. Female master musicians and vocalists in Iran have been banned from singing for the last thirty years. Sussan's work in exile in the U.S. has allowed her to not only continue to promote her sublime Iranian musical heritage but also to become one of the most innovative and unique vocalists in the world. On 9/11 she will sing for all her sisters who no longer have a voice.

A viral sensation, Sussan released and donated a moving song and video this month called NEDA'S EYES, a vocal tribute to those brave souls who dared defy Ahmadinejad.

This performance is cosponsored by the Levantine Cultural Center, which 2001 has championed greater understanding of the Middle East and North Africa by presenting arts and educational programs that bridge political and religious divides.

Media contact: Jordan Elgrably, Levantine Cultural Center, 310.402.8866.

MORE BACKGROUND ON SUSSAN DEYHIM

Sussan Deyhim's long anticipated one-night only show on 9/11 is seen by the Broad Stage as a chance to reach out to the artist's diverse and eclectic audience including the great music and poetry-loving Persian community. Sussan's last major appearance in L.A. was at Royce Hall in a UCLA Live sold-out performance. Her panoramic concept for this event evokes an exciting blend of rhythm, sophistication and exoticism-free from labels, borders or boundaries.

Sussan Deyhim is unique in her ability to make words audible in an extraordinarily vibrant, emotion-laden way-a quality that allows listeners to have an almost magical experience. These bold moves are par for the course for Sussan, who has broken new ground creating a global span of sound that combines percussive dance beats with sensual Eastern and Western overtones.

John Beasley will be doing new arrangements of John Coltrane's Naima, Joao Gilberto's version of Estate, Banan's Elaheye Naz. Mohsen Namjoo-a young revolutionary singer/songwriter/composer, who is very influential among Iranian youth and a super star-in Iran will also perform. The All-Star Band includes Iranian Grammy winning guitarist Ardeshir Farah, drummer Will Calhoun, violinist Keyavash Nourai and John Ossman on bass. Audiences will be privileged to hear a preview of Sussan's upcoming CD City of Leaves with the song "Dressed in Leaves," in collaboration with Richard Horowitz. Their last release was on Sony Classical.
Deyhim opens the Women of the World series at The Broad Stage, featuring a tribute to female musical pioneers from around the world, including singer-songwriter Judy Collins, Grammy-winning a cappella vocal group Sweet Honey In The Rock committed to the African American musical legacy and traditions.

Sussan Deyhim can be heard on many film scores including The Kite Runner, The Stoning of Soraya M. and The Last Temptation of Christ. Many A-list artists from across the spectrum of contemporary music, film, theater and television have collaborate with her, including Eve Ensler, Ornette Coleman, Bobby McFerrin, Peter Gabriel, Bill Laswell, Talvin Singh, Micky Hart, Branford Marsalis, Jerry Garcia, Doug Wimbish, Adrian Sherwood and The Blue Man Group and three of the most prominent female visual artists Shirin Neshat, Lita Albuquerque and Sophie Calle.

Deeply committed to speak for oppressed women in Iran, who are prevented by law for performing for men, Sussan was planning a risky and important concert tour of her homeland to reach out to her enormous following there. These plans were upended by the events of the Green Movement following the election in June of 2009. Ever since, Sussan worked tirelessly at the forefront of the international protests in support of demonstrations, organizing aid, concerts, speaking dates and financial support. She has spoken out politically about Iran at great risk for many years.

Sussan has also been a frequent participant and supporter of humanitarian events and benefits, including a performance at the gathering of the spiritual leaders of the world at the UN General Assembly in 2001, sponsored by Ted Turner; the first Gathering of Female Spiritual Leaders in Geneva at the United Nations, a 2004 performance for the Nobel peace prize winner Shirin Ebadi's award ceremony organized by Interfaith Center; the Royal Hope Gala, Royal Albert Hall, London, England with Placido Domingo, The Royal Ballet and many others, for medical aid to Iraqi children, "Witness," a benefit for human rights, sponsored by Peter Gabriel.

Sussan Deyhim composed the music and performed in Eve Ensler's play, "Necessary Targets" (Broadway Premiere starring Jane Fonda, Kathy Bates and Kerry Washington). She is associated with the Aborahman Boroumand Foundation, perhaps the most important Iranian human rights organization in DC, and has been a frequent guest at Ana Politkowskaya Foundation's events honoring the female journalists in war zones.

Sussan Deyhim, an Iranian composer, vocalist and performance artist.
www.sussandeyhim.com
www.myspace.com/sussandeyhim

VOCALS BY SUSSAN DEYHIM:

Quo Vadis: with The Polish Radio Orchestra
www.youtube.com/watch?v=DtiGPUFVqD8
Solidarity: withThe Krakou Symphony
www.youtube.com/watch?v=ttw5bYUPTBc

MORE ABOUT THE ARTISTS

Sussan Deyhim is an Iranian composer, vocalist and performance artist. She is internationally known for creating a unique sonic and vocal language imbued with a sense of ritual and the unknown. She was part of the national ballet company in Iran from the age of thirteen and she traveled all across Iran studying with master folk musicians and dancers. In 1976 she joined The Bejart Ballet in Europe after receiving a scholarship to attend Bejart's performance art school Mudra where she was trained in many of the great world, dance, music and theater traditions as well as in classical ballet. Her music remains true to the spirit of her ancient heritage while pointing to the future with a very personal and poetic dramatic sensibility. In 1980 she moved to New York embarking on a multifaceted career encompassing music, theatre, dance, media and film.

Her composition Windfall/Beshno Az Ney was recently used U2 throughout the US and Europe. "U2s 360 tour" in one of the largest scale tock tours to this day. Beshno Az Ney is an intro to U2 "Sunday Bloody Sunday" in a solidarity number with Iran's Green Movement.

Currently Sussan is working on "The House Is Black," a media opera based on works and life of the literary icon of Iranian contemporary poetry Forough Farrokhzad. On this project Deyhim collaborates with the brilliant Iranian writer, scholar, activist Azar Nafisi and award winning director David Schweizer and long time collaborator co-composer Richard Horowitz. She will compose music and sound design for an exquisite installation by Lita Albuquerque, recipient of the esteemed National Science Foundation Artists and Writers Program Grant, alongside famed film director Werner Herzog with his project "Encounters at the End of the World."

John Beasley, pianist/composer/producer, potent imagination can be heard in his recordings and playing. A prodigious performer and a prolific composer working in many styles and genres, with musicians from the jazz, classical, rock and pop music worlds, and on platforms including recordings, TV, film, video games and commercials, his approach to composing and playing is intelligent and exquisitely realized, always acknowledging the past while relentlessly exploring the present and future.

Beasley is a Louisiana native and third generation musician. His father is a pianist, bassoonist and composer. His mother is a brass instrumentalist, band conductor and orchestrator. His grandfather was a trombonist. Growing up around musicians, Beasley also learned how to play trumpet, oboe, drums, saxophone and flute, mainly because of his mother's need for wind and brass instrumentalists for her bands.

Declining an oboe scholarship from the Julliard because of his stronger love for jazz, Beasley went on to play, tour and record with some music luminaries, including Miles Davis, Freddie Hubbard, Steely Dan (MD, Christian McBride,), James Brown, Queen Latifah (MD), Jon Hassel, and Chaka Khan, to name a few. Recognizing Beasley's talent for composing and arranging, major recording artists have added Beasley's original piano sound, arrangements, and music to their projects. While touring with Miles Davis, Beasley was inspired to release his first solo recording "Cauldron," which was produced by Steely Dan's Walter Becker.

Highly regarded as a composer, at the young age of 24, Beasley started writing music for Paramount, Disney, and MGM's television shows, namely: Cheers, Family Ties, Star Trek and Fame. He also wrote the Touchstone TV logo, which is still used today. His first brush with Hollywood films was as a pianist and synthesist on film scores for film luminaries such as Thomas Newman, Dave Gruisin, Alan Silvestri, and Carmine Coppola in box office hits: WALL-E, Finding Nemo, Erin Brockovich, Godfather III, A Bug's Life and Austin Powers: The Spy who Shagged Me.

With the popularity of reality shows, Beasley, started working as Musical Director or Arranger on some of the top music and dance shows, including American Idol, Pussycat Dolls Presents, The Search for the Next Doll, America's Got Talent and Singing Bee. On Season 4 of American Idol, Beasley was Associate Musical Director overseeing the 12 female finalists. He arranged the selected songs and coached and rehearsed the contestants for their performances. To his credit, Carrie Underwood took the title and went on to earn a GRAMMY and become a No. 1 country music sensation.

Richard Horowitz is internationally known for creating a unique sonic language that fuses together his roots in classical, jazz and electronic music with the intensity of the trance music he first experienced in Morocco at the age of nineteen. He plays keyboards, percussion and the ney, an obliquely blown reed flute-one of the oldest human wind instruments. Since the late sixties his compositions have been inspired by the ritual drama of ancient music and by the shadings, motifs and overtones of instruments and voices from the these cultures. He has worked with tribal, classical and popular musicians from North Africa to Indonesia and has collaborated with Sussan Deyhim since the early eighties. His tracks are translations that morph ancient sources into the resonance of full spectrum surround-sound.

Richard has scored many feature films, receiving Golden Globe and Los Angeles Film Critics awards for his work on The Sheltering Sky directed by Bernardo Bertolucci. Other scores include Oliver Stone's Any Given Sunday (BMI Award), Sundance Grand Jury Prize winner, Three Seasons directed by Tony Bui and produced by Harvey Keitel, Jason Kliot and Joana Vincente, Tobruk (Czech Golden Lion Award), and Lakota Woman directed by Frank Pierson, produced by Jane Fonda.

From 1968 to 1979 Horowitz lived in Paris and Morocco where he studied Arabic, French, music and eastern philosophy. He was mentored by Paul Bowles, who also nominated him for the American Academy of Arts and Letters, Goddard Liberson Award.

Richard's main collaborator has been Sussan Deyhim. Deyhim and Horowitz began recording in 1981 in New York. Their first release was Azax/Attra: Desert Equations. It has since become a cult classic and was one of the pioneering efforts to create what would later be called world music, drum and bass and trip-hop.

After the success of The Sheltering Sky, Horowitz eventually settled in London with Deyhim in 1993 to work on a CD for Sony Classical. The result, Majoun, was recorded in New York, London, Paris, Los Angeles, Morocco and Indonesia. High performance Magazine described it as "Imbued with a sense of ritual and the unknown".
Horowitz and Deyhim composed The Gift of Love for Deepak Chopra and also collaborated with Shirin Neshat on the multimedia production Logic of the Birds performed in Siracusa Sicily, London and Lincoln Center. Horowitz also produced Gnawa Night Spirit Masters with Bill Laswell and Ritmos del Futuro Maroc/Seville, the music for the Moroccan National Day at Seville Expo 92.

In 1997 Horowitz founded - and served as artistic director for - The Gnaoua ( Gnawa) Festival in Essaouira, Morocco. The festival now attracts over four hundred thousand people every year and has helped raise the appreciation for Gnaoua music both inside and outside Morocco.

He has recently completed the scores for the films Casanegra directed by Noureddine Lakmari, Les Amants de Mogador starring Max von Sydow, David and Layla starring David Moscow and Shiva Rose, Return to Rajapur starring Lynn Collins, Frank Langella, and Justin Thereaux, Tobruk, Jihad for Love and Meeting Resistance. In 2006 he directed and co-produced a documentary film shot in India about the old masters of Indian music for
The Annenberg Foundation and produced Tcheky Karyo's first CD for Universal Music France. He also scored and co-starred in Beautiful Child directed by Fabritzio Cheisa. and composing a new CD and media opera The House is Black with Sussan Deyhim.

Jon Ossman is a native of New Yorks Mid-Hudson Valley, Jon began playing String Bass at age 11 in the school band. On his thirteenth birthday He was given an Electric Bass and by 14 Jon was working with local bar bands and playing club dates and casuals with a local Salsa band. At age 17 Jon moved to New York City to steep Himself in the study of North Indian Classical Music and the Sitar. While keeping with His studies Jon continuned playing bass with various groups when in 1982 He joined Richard Lloyd (Television). Through the years Jon has gone on to perform and record with a number of exceptional artist and players. Credits would include; Chis Botti, Marc Cohn, Paula Cole, John Hall, Levon Helm, Garth Hudson, Dominic Miller, Sting...

Jon lives in Los Angeles. He Can be seen performing locally with The Michael White Quintet Unit 2, and touring nationally with Marc Cohn this summer and fall.

Keyavash Nourai was born in Tehran, Iran where he began his serious pursuit of a musical career at the age of 10. He studied the violin and kamanche with the acclaimed Kamran Daroughe. He continued his musical studies in the United States under the tutelage of Alexander Treger, Eugene Fodor, Mark Menzies, and other prominent musicians. In addition, Nourai extended his skills by studying under the Indian violin masters L. Subramaniam and L.Shankar.

He attended the school of music at California State University, Northridge and earned his Bachelor's degree in world music from the California Institute of the Arts, where he later earned his masters degree in Western Classical Violin.

At the present time, Nourai plays and teaches numerous Persian instruments, such as setar, santur, tombak, and the quartertone piano. Also, he has mastered different styles of Radif playing which has given him various musical avenues for his virtuosic violin playing and improvisation. In addition, he has also composed numerous symphonic pieces and chamber music for orchestra.

Mohsen Namjoo is an Iranian singer, songwriter, composer and a non-conformist Setar player.
Born in a small north-eastern town of Iran in 1976, he began his musical training as a gifted student at the age of 12. He was admitted to the theatre and music faculty of the University of Tehran in 1994 after receiving traditional vocal and musical training with some of the greatest Iranian masters.

Namjoo's unconventional approach to the dogma of traditional music in formal institutions pushed him out of the mainstream where he found a vast audience with his debut album Toranj. Namjoo single handedly took on the mainstream on several fronts. He transformed the traditional persian style into a modern rendition that attracted younger generations while he simultaneously blended his music with western traditions of Rock and Blues. Namjoo did not stop with his great success as a musician and began to take on the dogma of traditional music lyrically. First with unconventional renditions of classical and neo-classical persian poetry and gradually with his own sophisticated, yet youthful and approachable sense of word play. There are no other examples of the Namjoo phenomenon in the contemporary Persian music scene. Given the circumstances in Iran, it is only natural that an artist like him would be lucky to find himself outside of the country, far from the hands of repression.

Mohsen Namjoo continues to connect with the hearts and souls of music lovers throughout the world. Payam Entertainment Inc. is proud to present a series of new albums in the coming months and launch a North American tour of Namjoo in "A Minor", a major live production with Namjoo's ensemble band.

Ardeshir Farah is part of the Grammy Nominee guitar duo "Strunz and Farah". The unique style of acoustic guitar playing of "Strunz and Farah" has influenced many guitar players. They have released 16 Cd's and one performance DVD. Their CD primal Magic was Billboard Magazine's "World Music Album of the Year" and was Number One on Billboard's World Music chart for weeks and their next release Americas was nominated for a Grammy for the "Best World Music Album of the year" and was also on top of the Billboard's World Music charts for many weeks. They have performed numerous concerts in USA, Canada, Central America and South America over the years and they have shared the stage with Chic Corea, George Benson, Miles Davis, Jackson Browne, etc. Ardeshir has also performed and recorded with Iranian artists like Dariush, Googoosh, Faramarz Aslani and many others.

About The Broad Stage:
Under the leadership of Director Dale Franzen and Artistic Chair Dustin Hoffman, The Eli and Edythe Broad Stage at the Santa Monica College Performing Arts Center opened its doors in Santa Monica in October 2008. Inspired by Italian "horseshoe" theaters, yet conceived in an absolutely contemporary vernacular, The Broad Stage is an artist's dream and an audience's delight. Unlike any performance space in the country, it is sublimely intimate with 499-seats and strikingly grand at the same time - allowing eye contact with artists from the boxes to the back row -forging a new kind of artist and audience experience in Los Angeles. Theater, dance, film, operas, musicals, symphony and chamber orchestras will be presented on one of the city's largest proscenium stages. Designed without compromise to embrace the artistic process from inspiration to opening night, and conceived as a global theater and community hub. In addition to The Broad Stage, The Edye Second Space, a smaller black box theater, presents new, developing and innovative work in theater, music and dance as part of the 21st Century Cabaret Series. Under the Radar Series (UTR) features younger, innovative artists and chamber pieces and plays. Programming at The Edye is intentionally spontaneous, reflecting the dynamic nature of the space and allowing the latest, most exciting artists to be booked on short notice. The Under the Radar Series is only $20.