Franghiz Ali-Zadeh was born in Azerbaijan, a republic of the Soviet States. She first came to prominence as a composer and performer while still a student of the celebrated composer Kara Karayev. Ali-Zadeh is highly regarded for her creativity and distinctive style. Her compositions draw from the vocabulary of modern European classical music, including the Second Viennese School, and incorporate the sounds of mugham (the main modal unit of Arabic music), music traditional to Azerbaijan. As a pianist, she performs at international festivals, playing programs that include the works of Crumb, Messiaen, and Schoenberg, composers she has popularized for Eastern audiences. She is recognized as a master interpreter of works by 20th century European and American composers, the Soviet avant garde, and traditional Azerbaijani composers.

About Oasis, Ali-Zadeh writes:

“An oasis is a quiet place of refuge, which everyone dreams about when weary from life’s tumults. It is a land of repose, beauty, and prosperity. Travelers in particular dream about oases, exhausted from the intense heat in the endless desert. Most of all they dream of water—clean, cold, crystalline water! They see water in their dreams—in the form of brooks and fountains, drops and waterfalls. It murmurs to them in their ears and falls in a stream onto their heads, cleansing their bodies and souls, bringing them coolness and bliss. The travelers dream about shady trees and crimson roses, about delicacies which beautiful women will bring to them. They dream about hearing the mellifluous singing of the ‘Gazelles’ of love again (a ‘Gazelle’ is a poetic form of a Mugam; it is based on a specific structure of classical Azerbaijani love poems).  But to reach this blessed land, this ‘El Dorado,’ is not so easy. Tests still await the travelers:  There is a long road, full of dangers and agitations.

“Oasis is one of the works included in the Silk Road cycle. The premiere of Mirage (for oud and chamber orchestra) was performed by the Nieuw Ensemble Amsterdam in the Netherlands in the beginning of 1998. In November 1998, Ask havasi (for solo cello) was premiered by Ivan Monigetti in Tallinn. The premiere of a concerto for percussion and chamber orchestra, performed by Evelyn Glennie and the Collegium Novum Zürich, was in August 1999 at the International Music Festival in Lucerne, Switzerland; this work, titled Silk Road, is also part of the cycle.”

Franghiz Ali-Zadeh’s Oasis was commissioned for the Kronos Quartet by Alta Tingle and The National Endowment for the Arts. The work appears on the 2005 Nonesuch release Mugam Sayagi: Music of Franghiz Ali-Zadeh, which includes several of the composer’s works commissioned for Kronos.