Don't Leave the Room
Multimedia concert with Nadar Ensemble
Don’t leave the room! Let furniture keep you company,
vanish, merge with the wall, barricade your iris
from the chronos, the eros, the cosmos, the virus.
These lines from Joseph Brodsky’s iconic poem Don’t Leave the Room set the tone for Nadar Ensemble’s latest project: a performance about seclusion, resistance, and political fear. Through music, sign language, film and poetry, the ensemble gives voice to private revolts, whispered refusals, and utopian worlds.
In Alexander Khubeev’s Don’t Leave the Room, Brodsky’s poem is signed, not spoken – powerful silence framed by a charged, dystopian sound world. Iranian composer Golnaz Shariatzadeh weaves animation and music into a love poem to a wounded city. In her piece Blue Womb, two sibling-creatures seek refuge by entering each other’s bodies.
Together they imagine a new city, drawn from ethereal soundscapes, shared memory and desire.
The Chorus by Abbas Kiarostami shows an old man muting the city’s noise by turning off his hearing aid, thus missing his granddaughter’s call. Silence as a refusal to hear the next generation.
And behind it all looms the legacy of Galina Ustvolskaya: a composer who barely left her room, yet whose music – once suppressed – still strikes with unforgiving force.
Don’t Leave the Room gathers works shaped by fear, courage, and isolation. It makes space for gestures that cannot be silenced, even when they go unheard.
Programme
Abbas Kiarostami
The Chorus – short movie (1982)
Golnaz Shariatzadeh
Blue Womb (2025) for ensemble, electronics and animation (Norwegian premiere)
Alexander Khubeev
Silentium! (2025) for solo performer, ensemble, electronics and live video (Norwegian premiere)
Galina Ustvolskaya
Piano Sonata 6 (1988)
Alexander Khubeev
Don’t leave the room (2022/2025) for solo performer, ensemble, electronics and live video (Norwegian premiere)
Facts
- Joseph Brodsky, Russian poet and Nobel laureate, was accused of “social parasitism” and exiled. The poem Don’t Leave the Room (1969/1970) was written during the outbreak of the Hong Kong flu.
- Many of Abbas Kiarostami's films navigate the tensions between individual agency and social structures in post-revolutionary Iran. The Chorus (1972) is an early short.
- The protests in Iran in 2022 were sparked by the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini in police custody. Women stood at the forefront, rallying around the slogan “Woman, Life, Freedom.”
- The two young composers Golnaz Shariatzadeh and Alexander Khubeev are unable to attend rehearsals or performances due to restrictive immigration laws and the realities of political exile.
Nadar Ensemble. Photo: Wim Heirbaut
Still from The Chorus (1982) directed by Abbas Kiarostamis. Photo: Kanoon
Still from The Chorus (1982) directed by Abbas Kiarostamis. Photo: Kanoon
Elena Evstratova. Photo: Elena Evstratova
Alexander Khubeev. Photo: Alexander Khubeev
Still from "Blue Womb" by Golnaz Shariatzadeh
Golnaz Shariatzadeh. Photo: Golnaz Shariatzadeh
Music by
- Galina Ustvolskaja
- Alexander Khubeev
- Golnaz Shariatzadeh
Film [The Chorus]
- Abbas Kiarostami
Nadar Ensemble
- Marieke Berendsen (violin)
- Nico Couck (e-guitar)
- Elena Evstratova (soloist)
- Katrien Gaelens (flute)
- Yves Goemaere (percussion)
- Wannes Gonnissen (sound design)
- Robin Goossens (business director)
- Elisa Medinilla (piano)
- Thomas Moore (trombone)
- Stefan Prins (artistic director)
- Steven Reymer (video and light)
- Dries Tack (clarinet)
- Floor Vandevelde, Soetkin Bral (sign language – VGT)
- Veerle Vervoort (production leader)
- Pieter Matthynssens (cello, artistic director)
The Chorus
- Abbas Kiarostami (writer)
- Javad Kahnamoui (writer)
- Yoosef Moghaddam (cast)
- Ali Asgari (cast)
- Janus Films (distribution)
Produced by
- Ultima Oslo Contemporary Music Festival
- Gaudeamus Utrecht
- DE SINGEL
- Festival Musica
- Muziekcentrum De Bijloke Gent
- Nadar Ensemble
Supported by
- Silentium! was commissioned by Ultima and Gaudeamus as part of the ULYSSES Platform, co-funded by the European Union
- Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation
