Improvisation of a Qanun is a happening centered around a newly developed Iranianized Qanun—a reconfigured version of the traditional Middle Eastern string instrument tailored specifically to the tonal system and modal complexity of Iranian music. Since 2018, a group of researchers and instrument makers has worked toward constructing a Qanun that departs from the Arabic and Turkish tuning systems that dominate existing versions of the instrument. This project introduces the unique instrumental object not merely as a new tool for sonic expression but as a symbolic act of cultural and political redefinition.

In Farsi, the word Qanun translates to The Law, adding a conceptual dimension that allows us to think of the instrument beyond its musical properties. This dual meaning enables the performance to function simultaneously as a concert and as a metaphor for legislative and systemic reimagination. In this way, the project performs a poetic speculation: if we can re-tune the instrument, can we also re-tune the structures that govern us?

The performance will feature 18-year-old musician Parnian Parsaei, one of the few emerging artists trained on this Iranianized Qanun. Parsaei will perform a live improvisation in front of an invited audience. The act of improvisation here is both aesthetic and political. It resists the rigidity of pre-composed structure, aligning instead with the dynamic and evolving nature of both music and law. The audience will witness—and hear—the first public articulation of this new sonic legal code. This event does not merely present music; it stages the emergence of a new voice, both instrumentally and symbolically.

By offering a platform for the first public improvisation on this newly constructed Qanun, Improvisation of a Qanun poses larger questions: What does it mean to create an autonomous cultural form within a region whose artistic production has often been entangled in colonial standardizations? How can sonic materiality inform our perception of identity, geography, and sovereignty? And most importantly, what might a re-tuned future sound like?

The project situates the instrument as a speculative device—a vessel through which new frequencies of independence, law, and aesthetic imagination can be explored. This is not merely a performance, but a rehearsal of a future, sonically and socially.