Composer Franghiz Alizadeh could be described as "musically bilingual." At the music conservatory in her native Azerbaijan she studied Bach, Beethoven and Brahms. And at home she absorbed traditionalmugammusic, played by her father on a lutelike instrument called thetar. Who better to write an opera about the meeting of Eastern and Western cultures?





"My idea was a love story between a mugam singer from Azerbaijan and an American artist," says the 63-year-old composer and pianist, who's in Houston for the premiere of a new chamber-opera, commissioned by the Houston Grand Opera. "They come from different worlds." Your Name Means the Sea, with music and libretto by Alizadeh, opens tonight at the Wortham Theater Center, with subsequent performances on Monday at Discovery Green, Tuesday at the Turquoise Center and Thursday at the Rothko Chapel. All performances are free.

Mugam is central to the culture of Azerbaijan, a former Soviet Republic on the Caspian Sea. It's not a country that's well known in the West — but its location at the nexus of Europe and Asia has given it a rich and turbulent history. The capital city, Baku (which is a sister city of Houston) has long been a crossroads of diverse cultural influences. "As a composer," Alizadeh explains, "it's difficult to combine styles - but all my life I've been trying to do it." She points out that Western music is based on a "tempered" system, with the scale made up of 12 evenly spaced notes. But mugam is untempered and makes use of "microtones" - notes that would lie between the keys of a piano. She continues: "Also, mugam is improvised music, like jazz. So it's impossible to write down everything on paper, in the score. Many things are 'behind' the score." Since 1999 Alizadeh has lived at least part of the year in Berlin, and she's won a following in the West. She's composed for members of the Berlin Philharmonic and Munich's State Opera Orchestra, and her works have been heard at music festivals in London, Amsterdam, Stockholm and other European cities. The late Russian cellist-conductor Mstislav Rostropovich (who, like Alizadeh, was originally from Baku) was a staunch supporter of her music. In the United States, her music has been performed by Yo-Yo Ma's Silk Road Ensemble and the Kronos String Quartet, which has released a CD devoted to her works, Mugam Sayagi.

So it's not surprising that when Houston Grand Opera's general director Anthony Freud was looking for a composer to write for the HGO's ongoing Song of Houston: East + West project, he approached her. "I became familiar with Alizadeh," Freud says, "as an important contemporary composer and also a specialist in mugam. I called her and said I'd love to find a way of encapsulating the meeting of two cultures in an opera, in the same way that she writes music. Franghiz was immediately very excited by this idea." Similarly, Freud points out that the plot of Your Name Means the Sea also has an East-meets-West theme. "The story itself is set on the beach in Galveston, where a Texan girl, who's a painter, hears this boy from Azerbaijan singing mugam music. They're drawn together through their own particular artistic talents." In order to stage this opera (which will be sung in a mixture of English and Azeri, with supertitles at the first two performances), the HGO has flown in four mugam artists from Azerbaijan. Tenor Babek Niftaliev and mezzo Malakkhanim Eubova will sing the roles of Seymur and Seymur's Mother. Mohlat Muslumov will play the tar, and Fakhraddin Dadashov will play the kamancha - a kind of fiddle on a long spike. Houston soprano Laura Botkin appears as Denise, and Philadelphia-based baritone John Packard portrays Denise's father. Alizadeh's score calls for a quartet of Western instruments as well. And to demystify what may be an unknown musical genre for some listeners, the HGO has also brought Los Angeles-based mugam expert Jeffrey Werbock to Houston. Werbock - who has been studying the music of Azerbaijan since the 1970s - describes mugam as "the most serious form of Azerbaijani music. It has an operatic quality, with a venerative, prayerful undertone." Tonight only, he'll be giving a presentation before the performance. "I'm going to be demonstrating instrumental mugam improvisations, in traditional modes. Some will be mildly improvised, others go more deeply into improvisation. But before I play a note, I'm going to say a few words to help first-time listeners ease their way into what might seem strange and unfamiliar, so they can quickly enter the music." Alizadeh says that while the mugam style will initially be unfamiliar to Western ears, it won't be hard for anyone to understand, especially when performed by her hand-picked musicians. "I think it's not difficult," she suggests, "because it's brilliant music, and the musicians are outstanding artists from Aberbaijan. They play and sing mugam very well. If you understand Mozart and Beethoven, it's not hard to understand and love mugam also."