Isfar Sarabski celebrates the Azerbaijani spring festival with his song "Novruz"

Last week, Isfar Sarabski's homeland, Azerbaijan, celebrated the Novruz spring festival, one of the most important and popular holidays in the country. At the start of the Astronomical New Year, people say goodbye to the old year and prepare for the feeling of physical and spiritual renewal that spring brings.

In addition to family gatherings and plenty of good food, music also plays a major role in the Novruz celebrations, including nationwide Ashiq and folk music concerts and the traditional Yalli dances. Isfar Sarabski is now contributing his own song, "Novruz", which, with its high tempo and rhythmic passages, can be read like a musical interpretation of the busy preparations for the festival and happy expectations. You can see the music video below .

"For me, Novruz is above all a family celebration that gathers all relatives, close friends and people around a table and signals the beginning of spring," comments Isfar Sarabski. “When composing, I was very inspired by this festival and its traditions, as I have participated in the preparations for the festival myself since I was a child, from collecting the wood for the fire, which we then jumped over in great leaps for collecting candy, colored eggs or biscuits in hats from all over the neighborhood. The pleasure was not in what or how much we would collect in the end, but in the process itself - the fun and joy that came with it. "

"Novruz" is a harbinger of Isfar Sarabski's upcoming debut album "Planet" , which will be released on April 30th . In his music, the 31-year-old pianist, composer and arranger combines the experimentation of Nils Frahm with the dreamlike likeness of Ólafur Arnald, the electronic explorations of Martin Kohlstedt with the symphonic brilliance of Max Richter and the jazz virtuosity of Herbie Hancock. For him, genre boundaries are only there to connect them with one another through musical bridges.