- News
- Chan Centre EXP series to debut World Premiere of Ali Sethi and Nicolás Jaar’s collaborative album Intiha
Chan Centre EXP series to debut World Premiere of Ali Sethi and Nicolás Jaar’s collaborative album Intiha
The Chan Centre for the Performing Arts announced today that it will be the first to present Ali Sethi and Nicolás Jaar’s collaborative album, Intiha, live on Friday, November 22 2024 at 8 PM as part of its Chan Centre EXP series. The album received rave reviews, with Pitchfork calling it a “moving tribute to the multiplicity of identity.” Tickets for this event go on sale on August 8 at noon.
Jaar will also participate in a week-long artist residency at the Chan Centre leading up to the November 22nd performance, where he will engage the UBC and wider Vancouver music community with a series of workshops and conversations.
“When I first heard Intiha I was stunned by the beautiful interweaving of Ali Sethi and Nicolás Jaar’s musical worlds. They are each brilliant artists, and I’m thrilled that their first live performance together will be here at the Chan Centre in Vancouver. This will be an ethereal evening of sound and metamorphosis."
Chan Centre Curator-in-Residence Jarrett Martineau
Sethi is a Pakistani-American singer, songwriter, composer and author best known for his modern takes on Hindustani classical music. He trained under master qawwali and khyal singer Ustad Naseeruddin Saami as well as Farida Khanum, known as “The Queen of Ghazal.” In 2022, he and singer Shae Gill went viral with their reggaeton raga-driven song “Pasoori,” which currently has over 750 million views on YouTube. This song became the first Pakistani song to feature on Spotify’s “Viral 50 – Global” and cemented Sethi’s name on Time’s 100 Next list, which highlighted that his “great gift is that he is able to use an ancient form of music from the region… to challenge and expand notions of gender, sexuality, and belonging.” Sethi returns to Vancouver following his sold-out 2023 concert at the Commodore Ballroom.
Jaar is a Chilean-American composer and acclaimed electronic music producer. Since 2008, he has released music under various guises spanning shades of pop, ambient, noise, and club music. His debut album, Space Is Only Noise (2011), put him on the map with Resident Advisor, Mixmag and Crack Mag crowning it the top album of the year.
Since 2013, he has curated the Other People label, releasing the visual and audio work of artists Maziyar Pahlevan and Africanus Okokon, and the music of Aho Ssan, Saint Abdullah, and Lydia Lunch among others. He has also co-produced FKA twigs’ album Magdalene, and has been commissioned to remix songs for artists such as Florence + The Machine and Brian Eno.
Sethi and Jaar were introduced by their mutual friend, Indian visual artist Somnath Bhatt, who also did the album’s artwork. During the pandemic, Sethi improvised and experimented with loops from Jaar’s acclaimed 2020 ambient album Telas. Sethi’s seductive vocals and selections of poetry turned out to be “what Telas had been missing,” according to Jaar.
While some songs lull listeners into a trance, others evoke dancing. All the while, Sethi sings centuries-old Urdu poems of love, loss and belonging. With Sethi and Jaar’s pairing, they transcend genre, culture and binaries of past and present, creating a powerful testament to collaboration. By suffusing Jaar’s otherworldly soundscapes with the yearning words of the Sufi mystics, they have created a “melancholic, buoyant, playful, brilliant expression of an album reimagined.” (Loud and Quiet)