Songs of Love & War

Free Admission, though a suggested donation of $20 is appreciated.

About The Program:

Arson Fahim is a pianist, composer, and conductor from Afghanistan. A fierce believer in the power of music to be a tool for activism and social change, and a symbol of resistance, perseverance, and hope, Arson’s music is often inspired by the tragedies and injustices of war. This concert will feature all music for piano and strings written by Arson Fahim, including a new piano quartet commissioned by Cuatro Puntos. Mr. Fahim will tell his story of growing up in Afghanistan as he aspired to be a pianist in a place where music is now entirely banned. The program will be played by Arson Fahim at the piano, and 4 string players from the internationally-recognized Cuatro Puntos Ensemble.

This concert is in conjunction with the 2024 release of Unsilenced: Underground Music From Afghanistan. This is a project organized and sponsored by Cuatro Puntos, in partnership with Arson Fahim. It features 12 musicians still inside Afghanistan who recorded their music in secret in 2023, not allowing even the ultimate in threats and possible punishments to stop them from their art. All attendees will receive a free copy of this album.

About the Presenters

Afghan Female Student Outreach (AFSO) is a volunteer non-profit organization committed to helping return Afghan women to intellectual and professional life by way of real-time, synchronous distance learning in the liberal arts and sciences, engineering, and health sciences, taught by university professors throughout North America, Europe, and the Middle East (including Trinity College, Wesleyan University, University of Connecticut, Pennsylvania State University, Carleton University, New York University, the University of Turino, and more). We aim to educate university women at all levels, including:

• pre-college students in need of English language learning to pursue university courses;
• undergraduate students at all levels who need both to improve their English and to restore and maintain their intellectual engagement with a particular major or field of inquiry;
• undergraduate students and recent university graduates with advanced English ability who seek courses in their major field;
• students at all levels who seek an academic bridge between their current situation and eventual enrollment in a degree-granting institution online or outside Afghanistan.

Our immediate goal is to re-engage women at all university levels in the academic and professional learning from which they have been barred in Afghanistan. Our long-term goal is to help educate the future leaders of Afghanistan, who will have the education and experience they need to help restore their country, and especially its women, if and when the regime changes. Because it is crucial to the stability of a future Afghanistan that its many provinces and ethnicities be represented among those future leaders, we are committed to recruiting and educating women from both dominant and underrepresented communities within Afghanistan.

Cuatro Puntos ("four points" in Spanish) is a non-profit organization that works to amplify persecuted, silenced or underrepresented musicians and their unique styles of music. Based in Connecticut, Cuatro Puntos is the parent organization for the performing group Cuatro Puntos Ensemble, and incorporates this flexible ensemble into many projects. Cuatro Puntos’ work is long-term project based, and projects often last many years. A project usually consists of a partnership with a musician or musical group who considers their art form as silenced, persecuted, or underrepresented. Through logistical and finacncial support, and often via musical partnerships with our permanent ensemble, Cuatro Puntos develops opportunities to spotlight the underrepresented musician or art form. The material results of a project vary, but they most often include: a recorded album (distributed on an international label), live concerts, commissions of new music, video projects, and music creation based on an intercultural dialogue model. Our album discography chronicles our most in-depth projects: Ji bo sê kes çay (preserving traditional Kurdish music); Through The Eyes of Children (highlighting American middle school students who speak out against youth violence); Ameen Mokdad’s The Curve and The Curve Live From Hartford(highlighting musical oppression by extremists in Iraq); Jaipur to Cairo (underrepresented composers/genres of the Middle East); Rosegarden of Light (partnering with young musicians in Afghanistan, and Unsilenced, an album of music recorded in 2023 by Afghan musicians who are in hiding inside the country. This year's coming project releases include Contemporary Ukrainian Composers (commissioned composers inside Ukraine who wrote their works in 2022 and 2023) and Songs of Love & War (music by Afghan composer/pianist Arson Fahim, and played by him with Cuatro Puntos Ensemble). Our albums have been published on Naxos, Toccata Classics, Métier, and Arkadash. The quality of our work has been praised around the world, with airtime on NPR, BBC, and glowing reviews by Fanfare Magazine. Cuatro Puntos Ensemble has performed extensively throughout the United States as well as in Bolivia, Brazil, England, Germany, the Netherlands, Turkey, and Afghanistan as they work alongside underrepresented musicians. Tracks from our albums have been included on the soundtrack for films produced in England, Australia, Iraq, and Afghanistan, and our organization has presented at prestigious universities such as New England Conservatory (Boston), Columbia University (New York), Institute for Cultural Diplomacy (Germany), and Goldsmiths College (London). We invite you to visit our website to experience our projects. You may interact by attending a live concert, listening to our albums, or searching our Monday Music video archives. CuatroPuntos.org