He has an impressive portfolio of musical compositions and a reputation that’s trusted in the industry. In May this year, he composed the theme music for the UAE Armed Forces anniversary celebrations. His contributions also include musical work for the Dubai International Film Festivals, as well as promotional films for Emirates Holidays, Burj Khalifa and the Dubai Metro.
The sharp and dramatic soundtrack in the promotional film for Emirates at Terminal 3 of Dubai International Airport has also been composed by Vladimir Persan.
Reviews on the Azerbaijan-born composer speak volumes about the quality of his work. The composition for the single We are coming too, which he came up with ten years ago has been widely praised. A review on the internet reads: “Even if you don’t dance, this one will get you moving. Infectious beat.”
Don’t, which was composed for a real estate company in Dubai in 2007, has been referred to as “big, epic music. It sounds so heroic.”
Another reviewer had this to say about Persan’s score for the Dubai International Film Festival 2009:
“All but the very end of this composition is music of the wild plains. Hot wind blowing across a vast open land. Natives running free and proud…”
The task of a music composer is challenging. Apart from the limitations of working behind the scenes, a composer also needs to compete with the flashier live performer. Composing, they say, is a work of creativity, while performing involves more of theatrics. However, Persan has straddled both sides.
Vladimir Persan was born in Baku, Azerbaijan, in 1975. His mother, a piano player herself, took notice of his talent and enrolled him at the age of six to the Azerbaijan State Conservatory, a renowned music school-studio. Persan learnt to play the grand piano, but regrets not fully taking the guidance of great teachers because of a lack of “seriousness” at the time. As he grew older he taught himself to play the electric and classical guitar.
In 1991 he joined the Art Music College in Baku to learn to play the classical guitar formally and completed the five-year course in just one year. At 16, rebelling against his classical training, Vladimir joined the State Concert Union, the official orchestra of the former Soviet Union as a rock guitar player and songwriter.
After the break-up of the Soviet Union, he became an independent composer, arranging, writing, producing and mixing tracks for popular Azeri artists such as Samir Bagirov, Brilliant Dadashova, Ella, Manana, Sevda Alekperzade, and Zulfiya Khanbabayeva.
He also continued performing as a concert and session guitar-player. Together with guitarist and composer Elshan Ahmad he created Azerbaijan’s first gypsy guitar duo called Alma, which proved to be very popular. Videos of their performances are still in great demand on the internet. In 2000, Persan moved to Dubai to test the waters. While many composers fit into a single category, Vladimir Persan’s musical genre remains unclassifiable.
A classically trained guitarist and pianist, his expertise in the rock and pop genres help define his personal style, which often blends traditional harmonies and orchestral music with the texture of ethnic instruments and even electronic sounds.
Persan has been fortunate to have written and produced the soundtrack for many documentaries and TV commercials. His work is clearly in demand and among his clients, he lists leading airlines, car dealerships, petroleum firms, electronic brands, media outlets and FMCGs.
The incredible thing is he’s a one-man band. He works alone, writing, composing and recording at his villa/studio in Mirdif. He’s quick too.
He says he composed the theme music for the 34th anniversary of the UAE Armed Forces in 24 hours at his studio. But Persan is down to earth and lists his accomplishments without a trace of arrogance.
He plays an energetic tune on the oud and becomes so immersed that it takes him a few minutes to shake off the trance-like hold the instrument has over him. “That’s what music does,” he smiles. “It can change you.”
I, ME, MYSELF
I would call myself a music composer, rather than a classical guitarist or any other grand title. Right now we don’t have a very big film industry here. I’m sure in the future there will be, and then I hope to compose music for motion pictures. One of my compositions was used in a film called American Standard. It was featured on the soundtrack.
I am very complicated. Sometimes I feel I have a split personality! I could very easily do something for myself musically, like making an instrumental album with the guitar or the oud, which I play equally well. Or I could do contemporary music for a commercial project. It would be quite easy for me to do both with my experience. But I can’t, because I don’t like to do what I can do.
I want to reach for the stars. Doing all those regular things may be satisfying enough for others. For me, it’s easy because I know how to do it. So it doesn’t satisfy me. I need to do something better than I can, which
I know is impossible. But I still have to attempt it.
I need a deadline to work. You can’t just commission me to work on a soundtrack and wait for it to happen at its pace. Unless I have a deadline, I find that I am in limbo.
I have stopped performing in public. I just don’t have the time. I used to perform at a Spanish restaurant at Wafi Mall, for about eight years. By the time I stopped two years ago, I felt like I was going through the motions. I feel free now without having to perform with certain restrictions.
I feel there is never enough time to do all the things I want to do in my lifetime. I don’t know why, for me everything happens at the same time. I might be sitting and doing nothing, when suddenly three or four projects come up at the same time, and all of them have to be finished immediately! Sometimes I have just a day to complete a recording. I just don’t have the time to sit and dream or wait to find something to inspire me. One might be a drama, the other a comedy and the third a tragedy or an action piece. I have to think of all these genres while composing the soundtracks simultaneously. So I just don’t have enough time for all the things I would like to do.
I, ME, MYSELF
Me and music
I have been playing since I was six years old. My relationship with music is very simple. There is music, therefore I am. For me it means many things. First of all, it is my life’s work. It is something I really like to do. Most people aren’t happy because they are forced to do something they have little affinity for in order to earn a living. Here I can work 24/7 on what I love doing – creating something, actually it’s like building something. It may sound silly, but it’s the essence of life.
Me and my parents
My mother was a musician from Azerbaijan. She played piano in concerts. My father was a scientist and engineer. In the erstwhile Soviet Union, he worked for a state company that used to build spaceships.
From my mother, I inherited music. I inherited something from my father as well. There are so many factors involved in music now, such as technology and computers. Now that we’re in the digital age, we have to know so many things. You can’t just be a classical composer or musician. You should understand and know how to use electronics, computers, synthesiser, hardware, how to mix, etc. You should be a sound engineer, as well as a computer whiz, otherwise you would find it difficult to survive in the industry.
Me and my youth
When you’re a child, your parents push you into so many areas. Sports, music, chess... my parents made me try different things. But what stayed with me was music. I learnt playing the piano for 15 years. I also started playing the guitar. I played in the school band and experimented with rock music. It was fun, but I never take anything I do lightly, so I was also practising all the time.
At 16, I joined the State Concert Union, an orchestra controlled by the state. It was a very professional orchestra, and hence a very prestigious one. You had to be very talented to get accepted. Though I was very young I made the cut. Times were changing, it was the beginning of the end of the Soviet Union. Earlier, if you played rock you were rejected; it was like betraying your motherland. Play jazz and you could end up in jail! But thankfully that had changed by the time I applied to play with the State Concert Union.
Me and composing
My compositions depend on the inputs I get from the film-maker. The visuals can inspire me, but usually when directors first come to me they just have the sketches. Sometimes there are storyboards. Say for instance, there are two people in the scene and they meet for ten seconds onscreen after which they are walking to an office are to have a cup of tea ... the real story is unfolding here. (And because it is only a sketch or a storyboard) I have to imagine it visually. Usually I don’t have the time to wait until the visuals are ready. So you work with whatever you get, the sketches, the storyboards or sometimes the rough cut.
Many a time the director has his brief on the kind of music he would like to have. Other times they want me to suggest the kind of music that would be appropriate. Then
I start to compose on the computer. What I do is more than just a mere arrangement – I do the entire musical composition – the arrangement and the master track. You could say that I am a one-man team – I compose, conduct and arrange music. Sometimes if I need Arabic or Bedouin chants, I have to get someone to record it separately. For instance in the huge project like the Freej animation series, I had to record it with a live orchestra and at that point I cannot say I don’t like working with a live orchestra.
This year I conducted the orchestra live at the Abu Dhabi Awards.
I composed the piece for the opening ceremony as well.
Me and my family
What I have now is all because of my wife. My mother always told me that I needed someone to look after me. I was so immersed playing and practising music that I hardly found time to do anything else. But as I grew older, I realised why she said that. So when I met my wife Lena in Dubai, it was just as my mother had predicted. She just took over from her. I can rely on her to look after everything while I concentrate on my music. She’s my biggest support. She looks after the family and even buys my clothes for me! We got married in 2002. If it weren’t for her, I wouldn’t be where
I am today.
Me and fatherhood
I don’t know how I can explain the change fatherhood brought about. It wasn’t a sudden or drastic change in my lifestyle, because it was almost like I was ready for it. There was this new precious bundle in our lives. Life became more exciting with my daughter, Taisiya.
She is five and she has a talent for music. I didn’t want to push her into anything, but she chose to play the piano when she started school. She recently wanted to play at the school assembly and I was a little concerned so I decided to accompany her on the guitar. But as it turned out she didn’t need my help. She was cool, collected and performed like a professional.
I, ME, MYSELF
How different is composing for films from doing an album?
One common thing is where they both originate – in my imagination. For example, if I were composing a piece for a very important event, I would like to hear the key words from the principals about their conception of the event.
It is the same if I were working on an advertising campaign. I first ask them to send me their website links. I like to see how it is designed – it conveys the personality of the company. It brings pictures to my mind of the person in various situations, how he or the company would feel in a particular situation, and the notes start forming in my head.
You can go wrong sometimes, but most of the time this apporach works for me. Some people think I’m crazy, but it gives me an insight and adds a new dimension to my composition.
Is there a relationship between music and healing?
I have read that archaeologists who went into the pyramids discovered that the mummies were well preserved despite the presence of bacteria due to the ‘sound engineering’ inside the pyramids, i.e., the resonation of sound within. They confirmed that sound resonates at a different frequency inside the pyramids. The standard frequency for sound recordings since the 20th century is 440 Hz. In the pyramids, sound resonated at a different frequency – at 442 Hz.
The theory is that the mummies were so well preserved because bacteria cannot survive in areas where sound is at this frequency. It’s a very interesting concept.
I’ve tried playing music at that frequency, some Baroque pieces and even some Bach and it does sound very different. It sounds much more majestic. There is a lot of research going on in this field and I personally find the theory has substance.
Music played at this frequency, I feel, has a much more profound effect on our system. A lot of diseases are caused due to stress and music relieves stress, thus helping remove the cause of the illness.
Do you feel music can unite the world?
That’s an interesting thought because what I am attempting to do now is experiment with music from different countries. For instance, I try to find out how instruments such as the sitar, or the oud, were created. How the society or the tribe that was responsible for their creation was living at that time, what purpose the instrument was created for, and the kind of music it was made to play.
Music is everywhere, so it is very easy to connect with people from different regions through music.
