Album description:

We’re releasing a series of EP singles (digital only) with Ramin Amin Tafreshi, a lovely energetic and very distinctive composer with an Irianian – Dutch background. Ramin’s an often recurring guest at and very dear person for the label and his music’s true to the 7MNTN- philisophy: the love for musical research, sincere care and interest for the human-being behind each musician. His music fits each ensemble and solist like a glove, it’s both challenging and fun to explore, always alive and upbeat and flavored with many elements from Iranian culture.

Planned releases:
Prelude for Piano – 19 September ’25
It’s the Voice that Shall Remain – 17 October ’25
Event Horizon – 28 November ’25
Fantasia for Alto Saxophone – 23 January ’26
Fractured Glances for Bassoon – 13 February ’26

Prelude for Piano, a piano solo piece recorded and world-premiered at the Concertgebouw Amsterdam by Dutch pianist Ramon van Engelenhoven. The composer himself describes the piece as: an exploration of mysterious harmonies and alluring melodies. Composed shortly after I moved to the Netherlands, the work draws its emotional depth from my personal experience of immigration. It stands as both a reflection on that transformative period and a “prelude” to a chapter yet to come. Throughout the piece, thematic and melodic material intertwine in a persistent ambiguity that carries from the opening bars to the final chord, which offers no definitive resolution. 

Event Horizon (The Point of No Return) is a composition for harp and electronics by Ramin Amin Tafreshi and Soheil Shayesteh, inspired by the story of Orpheus and Eurydice. Its title references the astronomical term “event horizon,” a metaphor for the point of no return, mirrored in the story of Orpheus when he realizes that Eurydice will be forever trapped in the realm of Hades. The work explores the inner worlds of Eurydice and Orpheus: the harp narrates Orpheus’s journey, while electronics evoke the dark, haunting realm of the underworld and reflect Eurydice’s emotional turmoil. This combination portrays the tension, depth, and emotional intensity of the myth.

It’s the Voice that shall Remain is a composition for soprano and piano trio by Ramin Amin Tafreshi, based on Sheema Kalbasi’s English translation of a poem by Simin Behbahani, the renowned Iranian poet and women’s rights activist. Premiered at Het Concertgebouw in 2018, it won both the second prize and the audience prize at the Alba Rosa Viëtor Composition Competition. The work is a monodrama about a defiant woman whose voice endures beyond her presence. Her fight for freedom and women’s rights resounds even when she is gone. It is a tribute to courage, resilience, and the enduring power of women’s voices.

Fantasia for Alto Saxophone is a reimagining of distant and faded memories—an attempt to descend into the subconscious and retrieve something from the tangle of images or sounds hidden within, like the imagined sound of a first lullaby. Its Persian-inspired melodies appear, transform, and unfold, suspended between memory and imagination, between what is recalled and what is longed for.

Fractured Glances explores a musical idea from multiple perspectives. Each theme or motif is a fractured glimpse, revealing only a fragment of an underlying reality. The music shifts between lyrical, expressive moments and sudden, punctuated, syncopated gestures. It reflects those times when we look back at something once glimpsed, but then it gets reshaped and fractured by our imagination.