Sussan Deyhim
Encyclopedia
Sussan Deyhim is an Iran
ian singer, composer and dancer.
Born in Tehran
, her career began as a dancer with Iran's Pars National Ballet company. Since 1980 she has lived in the United States
, where she has collaborated with many musicians, including Arto Lindsay
and Richard Horowitz
.
Sussan Deyhim is a composer, vocalist and performance artist who has been at the forefront of experimental music internationally for over two decades. Deyhim's music combines extended vocal techniques, digital processing, and the ancient mysticism of Middle Eastern music to create a deeply moving fusion of East and West.
Born in Tehran, Sussan Deyhim began her career dancing with Iran's Pars National Ballet company (performing weekly on Iranian national television), and then with Maurice Bjart's Ballet of the 20th Century. She moved to New York City in 1980, embarking on a multifaceted career encompassing music, theater, dance and media, and wide-ranging collaborations with leading artists from across the spectrum of contemporary art.
Deyhim has performed and recorded widely as a solo artist. Her one-woman show Vocodeliks, commissioned by the Whitney Museum of Art, led Billboard Magazine to describe Deyhim as "an overpowering presence...[whose] wordless incantations are amplified in harmonized layers and recycled into sampled loops, beckoning you into this virtual desert ritual" while the New York Times said that her "thrilling music...sounds in the ear long after you've left the show." Deyhim's solo recordings include Madman of God: Divine Love Songs of the Persian Sufi Masters, Shy Angels (with Bill Laswell) for the visionary label Crammed Discs and Turbulent. Other recordings include Majoun (for Sony Classical) and Desert Equations (released on Crammed Discs), both with the composer Richard Horowitz, a frequent collaborator. With composer and director Heiner Goebbels, Deyhim recorded Shadows (for ECM), based on writings of Edgar Allan Poe and Heiner Mueller, and composed and performed music for Deepak Chopra's A Gift of Love, with narration by Martin Sheen, Madonna, Goldie Hawn, and Debra Winger. She was also a featured soloist on Hal Wilner's tribute to Kurt Weill, Lost in the Stars.
Deyhim's numerous collaborations with the renowned visual artist/filmmaker Shirin Neshat
have received critical acclaim, including the video Turbulent, which won the Golden Lion at the Venice Biennial. Their multimedia performance Logic of the Birds was based on Farid ud-Din Attar's mystical book of poetry written in the 12th Century; produced by the Lincoln Center Summer Festival, the Walker Art Center, the Kitchen, and Artangel, Logic toured internationally.
Deyhim's previous work in the theater includes directing, co-composing, choreographing and performing a series of collaborations with Horowitz including: AZAX/ATTRA: Desert Equations (a one-woman multimedia performance piece produced by La Mama in New York City which toured internationally including Ars Electronica in Austria, Morocco, Paris, Berlin and Hong Kong); and X-Isle/Isle-X, commissioned by the Hong Kong Cotemporary Dance Company (which subsequently toured in Japan and Indonesia). As a performer, Deyhim has appeared in many international theater productions, including works by Elizabeth Swados, Jean Claude Van Italie, and Lindsay Kemp.
Deyhim has appeared on numerous film soundtracks including The Last Temptation of Christ
, directed by Martin Scorsese
, with music by Peter Gabriel
), Any Given Sunday, (directed by Oliver Stone
; soundtrack by Richard Horowitz
) Unfaithful (directed by Adrian Lyne
, with music by Jan Kaczmarek), and Sleeper Cell, Golden Globe-winning Showtime series with music by Paul Haslinger
. Recent collaborations include The Kite Runner
with music by Albert Iglesias, The Stoning of Soraya M.
with music by John Debney
and The Rise of the Argonauts with music by Tyler Bates
. Her recent score for the Czech film, Tubruk, in collaboration with Richard Horowitz won them a Golden Lion
(the Czech equivalent of the Academy Award) for 2008's best score. She has collaborated with many figures in contemporary music, including Branford Marsalis
, Jerry Garcia
, Jaron Lanier
, Christian Marclay
, Elliott Sharp
, Arto Lindsay
, Loren Rush
and Winston Tong
. She has also toured internationally with Bill Laswell
, Bobby McFerrin
, Ornette Coleman
, Jah Wobble
, Will Calhoun
, Doug Wimbish
and Adrian Sherwood
, among others.
Deyhim has been a frequent participant at humanitarian events and benefits, including a performance at the gathering of the spiritual leaders of the world at the UN General Assembly in 2001; the first Gathering of Female Spiritual Leaders in Geneva
at the United Nations; a 2004 performance for Nobel peace prize winner Shirin Ebadi
's award ceremony organized by Interfaith Center; the Royal Hope Gala, Royal Albert Hall
, London with Placido Domingo
, The Royal Ballet and others, for medical aid to Iraq
i children; and "Witness", a human rights benefit, sponsored by Peter Gabriel
.
Iran
Iran , officially the Islamic Republic of Iran , is a country in Southern and Western Asia. The name "Iran" has been in use natively since the Sassanian era and came into use internationally in 1935, before which the country was known to the Western world as Persia...
ian singer, composer and dancer.
Born in Tehran
Tehran
Tehran , sometimes spelled Teheran, is the capital of Iran and Tehran Province. With an estimated population of 8,429,807; it is also Iran's largest urban area and city, one of the largest cities in Western Asia, and is the world's 19th largest city.In the 20th century, Tehran was subject to...
, her career began as a dancer with Iran's Pars National Ballet company. Since 1980 she has lived in the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
, where she has collaborated with many musicians, including Arto Lindsay
Arto Lindsay
Arthur Morgan Lindsay is an American guitarist, singer, record producer and experimental composer. He is a 1974 graduate of Eckerd College in St. Petersburg, Florida....
and Richard Horowitz
Richard Horowitz
Richard Horowitz is a composer, producer, arranger, and musician .He is best known for his work on The Sheltering Sky, directed by Bernardo Bertolucci, which was awarded the 1990 Golden Globe and LA Film Critics Music Awards; Any Given Sunday, directed by Oliver Stone, which was awarded the 2000...
.
Sussan Deyhim is a composer, vocalist and performance artist who has been at the forefront of experimental music internationally for over two decades. Deyhim's music combines extended vocal techniques, digital processing, and the ancient mysticism of Middle Eastern music to create a deeply moving fusion of East and West.
Born in Tehran, Sussan Deyhim began her career dancing with Iran's Pars National Ballet company (performing weekly on Iranian national television), and then with Maurice Bjart's Ballet of the 20th Century. She moved to New York City in 1980, embarking on a multifaceted career encompassing music, theater, dance and media, and wide-ranging collaborations with leading artists from across the spectrum of contemporary art.
Deyhim has performed and recorded widely as a solo artist. Her one-woman show Vocodeliks, commissioned by the Whitney Museum of Art, led Billboard Magazine to describe Deyhim as "an overpowering presence...[whose] wordless incantations are amplified in harmonized layers and recycled into sampled loops, beckoning you into this virtual desert ritual" while the New York Times said that her "thrilling music...sounds in the ear long after you've left the show." Deyhim's solo recordings include Madman of God: Divine Love Songs of the Persian Sufi Masters, Shy Angels (with Bill Laswell) for the visionary label Crammed Discs and Turbulent. Other recordings include Majoun (for Sony Classical) and Desert Equations (released on Crammed Discs), both with the composer Richard Horowitz, a frequent collaborator. With composer and director Heiner Goebbels, Deyhim recorded Shadows (for ECM), based on writings of Edgar Allan Poe and Heiner Mueller, and composed and performed music for Deepak Chopra's A Gift of Love, with narration by Martin Sheen, Madonna, Goldie Hawn, and Debra Winger. She was also a featured soloist on Hal Wilner's tribute to Kurt Weill, Lost in the Stars.
Deyhim's numerous collaborations with the renowned visual artist/filmmaker Shirin Neshat
Shirin Neshat
Shirin Neshat شیرین نشاط is an Iranian visual artist who lives in New York. She is known primarily for her work in film, video and photography.-Background:Neshat's parents were upper middle-class...
have received critical acclaim, including the video Turbulent, which won the Golden Lion at the Venice Biennial. Their multimedia performance Logic of the Birds was based on Farid ud-Din Attar's mystical book of poetry written in the 12th Century; produced by the Lincoln Center Summer Festival, the Walker Art Center, the Kitchen, and Artangel, Logic toured internationally.
Deyhim's previous work in the theater includes directing, co-composing, choreographing and performing a series of collaborations with Horowitz including: AZAX/ATTRA: Desert Equations (a one-woman multimedia performance piece produced by La Mama in New York City which toured internationally including Ars Electronica in Austria, Morocco, Paris, Berlin and Hong Kong); and X-Isle/Isle-X, commissioned by the Hong Kong Cotemporary Dance Company (which subsequently toured in Japan and Indonesia). As a performer, Deyhim has appeared in many international theater productions, including works by Elizabeth Swados, Jean Claude Van Italie, and Lindsay Kemp.
Deyhim has appeared on numerous film soundtracks including The Last Temptation of Christ
The Last Temptation of Christ
The Last Temptation of Christ is a novel written by Nikos Kazantzakis, first published in 1953. It was first published in English in 1960. It follows the life of Jesus Christ from his perspective...
, directed by Martin Scorsese
Martin Scorsese
Martin Charles Scorsese is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, actor, and film historian. In 1990 he founded The Film Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to film preservation, and in 2007 he founded the World Cinema Foundation...
, with music by Peter Gabriel
Peter Gabriel
Peter Brian Gabriel is an English singer, musician, and songwriter who rose to fame as the lead vocalist and flautist of the progressive rock group Genesis. After leaving Genesis, Gabriel went on to a successful solo career...
), Any Given Sunday, (directed by Oliver Stone
Oliver Stone
William Oliver Stone is an American film director, producer and screenwriter. Stone became well known in the late 1980s and the early 1990s for directing a series of films about the Vietnam War, for which he had previously participated as an infantry soldier. His work frequently focuses on...
; soundtrack by Richard Horowitz
Richard Horowitz
Richard Horowitz is a composer, producer, arranger, and musician .He is best known for his work on The Sheltering Sky, directed by Bernardo Bertolucci, which was awarded the 1990 Golden Globe and LA Film Critics Music Awards; Any Given Sunday, directed by Oliver Stone, which was awarded the 2000...
) Unfaithful (directed by Adrian Lyne
Adrian Lyne
Adrian Lyne is an English filmmaker and producer. He is best known for directing films that focus on sexually charged characters and often uses natural light, a fog machine and other effects to create eroticized atmospheres...
, with music by Jan Kaczmarek), and Sleeper Cell, Golden Globe-winning Showtime series with music by Paul Haslinger
Paul Haslinger
Paul Haslinger is an Austrian-born composer and musician currently based in Los Angeles, California.- Life and career :...
. Recent collaborations include The Kite Runner
The Kite Runner
The Kite Runner is a novel by Khaled Hosseini. Published in 2003 by Riverhead Books, it is Hosseini's first novel, and was adapted into a film of the same name in 2007....
with music by Albert Iglesias, The Stoning of Soraya M.
The Stoning of Soraya M.
The Stoning of Soraya M. is a 2008 American drama film adapted from French-Iranian journalist Freidoune Sahebjam's 1990 book La Femme Lapidée, based on a true story...
with music by John Debney
John Debney
John C. Debney is an American film composer. He received an Academy Award nomination for his score for Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ...
and The Rise of the Argonauts with music by Tyler Bates
Tyler Bates
Tyler Bates is a music producer and composer for films. His most known work includes "The Hangman's Song" and various other tracks from the zombie horror film Dawn of the Dead, and 2008's Day of the Dead...
. Her recent score for the Czech film, Tubruk, in collaboration with Richard Horowitz won them a Golden Lion
Golden Lion
Il Leone d’Oro is the highest prize given to a film at the Venice Film Festival. The prize was introduced in 1949 by the organizing committee and is now regarded as one of the film industry's most distinguished prizes...
(the Czech equivalent of the Academy Award) for 2008's best score. She has collaborated with many figures in contemporary music, including Branford Marsalis
Branford Marsalis
Branford Marsalis is an American saxophonist, composer and bandleader. While primarily known for his work in jazz as the leader of the Branford Marsalis Quartet, he also performs frequently as a soloist with classical ensembles and has led the group Buckshot LeFonque.-Biography:Marsalis was born...
, Jerry Garcia
Jerry Garcia
Jerome John "Jerry" Garcia was an American musician best known for his lead guitar work, singing and songwriting with the band the Grateful Dead...
, Jaron Lanier
Jaron Lanier
Jaron Zepel Lanier is an American computer scientist, best known for popularizing the term virtual reality .A pioneer in the field of VR, Lanier and Thomas G. Zimmerman left Atari in 1985 to found VPL Research, Inc., the first company to sell VR goggles and gloves...
, Christian Marclay
Christian Marclay
Christian Marclay is a Swiss-American visual artist and composer.Marclay's work explores connections between sound, noise, photography, video, and film...
, Elliott Sharp
Elliott Sharp
Elliott Sharp is an American multi-instrumentalist, composer, and performer.A central figure in the avant-garde and experimental music scene in New York City since the late 1970s, Sharp has released over eighty-five recordings ranging from blues, jazz, and orchestral music to noise, no wave rock,...
, Arto Lindsay
Arto Lindsay
Arthur Morgan Lindsay is an American guitarist, singer, record producer and experimental composer. He is a 1974 graduate of Eckerd College in St. Petersburg, Florida....
, Loren Rush
Loren Rush
Loren Rush is a U.S. composer. His works include the drone piece Hard Music for three amplified pianos. The piece features no melodic figuration but rather clouds created by only one note, the low D above cello C, repeated quickly enough by each player to be heard as nearly continuous...
and Winston Tong
Winston Tong
Winston Tong is an actor/playwright, visual artist, puppeteer, and singer/songwriter. He is best-known for his vocal work in Tuxedomoon, and for winning an Obie award in puppetry for "Bound Feet" in 1978.-Early years:...
. She has also toured internationally with Bill Laswell
Bill Laswell
Bill Laswell is an American bassist, producer and record label owner....
, Bobby McFerrin
Bobby McFerrin
Robert "Bobby" McFerrin, Jr. is an American vocalist and conductor. He is best known for his 1988 hit song "Don't Worry, Be Happy". He is a ten-time Grammy Award winner.-Life:...
, Ornette Coleman
Ornette Coleman
Ornette Coleman is an American saxophonist, violinist, trumpeter and composer. He was one of the major innovators of the free jazz movement of the 1960s....
, Jah Wobble
Jah Wobble
Jah Wobble is an English bass guitarist, singer, poet and composer. He became known to a wider audience as the original bass player in Public Image Ltd in the late 1970s and early 1980s, but left the band after two albums...
, Will Calhoun
Will Calhoun
Will Calhoun is an American drummer, who graduated with honors from Berklee College of Music.-Career:...
, Doug Wimbish
Doug Wimbish
Doug Wimbish is a bass player, primarily known for his studio work for the rap/hip hop label Sugarhill Records and his membership of the funk metal band Living Colour. He has played for a vast range of artists, including Jeff Beck, Mick Jagger, Madonna, George Clinton, Paula Cole, Bomb the Bass,...
and Adrian Sherwood
Adrian Sherwood
Adrian Sherwood is an English record producer best known for his work with dub music as well as for remixing a number of popular acts such as Coldcut, Depeche Mode, The Woodentops, Primal Scream, Pop Will Eat Itself, Sinéad O'Connor, and Skinny Puppy...
, among others.
Deyhim has been a frequent participant at humanitarian events and benefits, including a performance at the gathering of the spiritual leaders of the world at the UN General Assembly in 2001; the first Gathering of Female Spiritual Leaders in Geneva
Geneva
Geneva In the national languages of Switzerland the city is known as Genf , Ginevra and Genevra is the second-most-populous city in Switzerland and is the most populous city of Romandie, the French-speaking part of Switzerland...
at the United Nations; a 2004 performance for Nobel peace prize winner Shirin Ebadi
Shirin Ebadi
Shirin Ebadi is an Iranian lawyer, a former judge and human rights activist and founder of Defenders of Human Rights Center in Iran. On 10 October 2003, Ebadi was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for her significant and pioneering efforts for democracy and human rights, especially women's,...
's award ceremony organized by Interfaith Center; the Royal Hope Gala, Royal Albert Hall
Royal Albert Hall
The Royal Albert Hall is a concert hall situated on the northern edge of the South Kensington area, in the City of Westminster, London, England, best known for holding the annual summer Proms concerts since 1941....
, London with Placido Domingo
Plácido Domingo
Plácido Domingo KBE , born José Plácido Domingo Embil, is a Spanish tenor and conductor known for his versatile and strong voice, possessing a ringing and dramatic tone throughout its range...
, The Royal Ballet and others, for medical aid to Iraq
Iraq
Iraq ; officially the Republic of Iraq is a country in Western Asia spanning most of the northwestern end of the Zagros mountain range, the eastern part of the Syrian Desert and the northern part of the Arabian Desert....
i children; and "Witness", a human rights benefit, sponsored by Peter Gabriel
Peter Gabriel
Peter Brian Gabriel is an English singer, musician, and songwriter who rose to fame as the lead vocalist and flautist of the progressive rock group Genesis. After leaving Genesis, Gabriel went on to a successful solo career...
.