| Composer: | Sami Seif |
| Publisher: | Sami Seif |
| Duration: | 00:00:00 |
| Instrumentation: | Cello Alone |
| Nickname: | Meanings |
| Key: | D Bayati |
| Year: | 2021 |
| Work Type: | Unaccompanied Works |
Meanings | معاني derives its material from my string quartet Orientalism (2020, rev. 2021). In Orientalism, the violins and viola play soli based on this material (the cello has a solo based on different material later in the piece). Meanings | معاني came about as I wanted to get the chance to hear it in the cello’s beautiful low register.
I am very grateful to Gabriel Ramos for tirelessly workshopping Meanings | معاني and helping to make it into what it has become.
Meanings | معاني was performed by Gabriel Ramos on April 24 and 27, 2022 at the Cleveland Institute of Music.
Meanings | معاني was a finalist at the 2022 ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composer Awards.
composerbiography: SamiSeif
Lebanese composer and music theorist Sami Seif (b. 1998) has been praised as “a distinctive compositional voice” who creates “intoxicating and fascinating soundworld[s]”. Described as “very tasteful and flavorful” with “beautiful, sensitive writing!”, his music is inspired by the aesthetics, philosophies, paradigms and poetry of his Middle-Eastern heritage. His latest musical concerns center around the phenomenology of time and of differing degrees of focus.
Originally from the small town of Ashkout in Mount Lebanon, he was born to a non-musical family in Abu Dhabi and he is fluent in Arabic, French and English. He started out at the age of twelve as a self-taught musician, composing and playing on microtonal keyboards. Not having had access to formal music education, Seif taught himself how to read and write music by reading theory textbooks. He later formally studied piano, composition, audio engineering, and sound synthesis.
Seif studied composition and music theory at the Cleveland Institute of Music, where, he was honored with the Donald Erb prize in composition and the Beth Pearce Nelson award in music theory upon graduation. He is currently pursuing his doctoral studies at the CUNY Graduate Center.