Saira Peter is a London trained British-Asian soprano with a very wide repertoire. Saira not only possesses an accomplished professional operatic voice, but she has a unique ability to sing elements of both eastern and western classical traditions in one breath. Until Saira Peter entered the music scene, it was thought that these two styles of singing were mutually exclusive. They use different forms of vocalisation, each requiring specific techniques. It was thought that the ability to sing in one style excluded the human capacity to acquire the other. Saira proved this assumption to be completely wrong!
Saira has the unique ability to move effortlessly between western and eastern classical voice. The former is based on discreet step-like movements of semitones and the latter on micro tones characterised by sliding notes. Unusually for a western vocalist, she can ‘stand on’ (emphasise) consonants with great clarity and strength. This is demonstrated through sounds such as ’N’, which normally produce a closed sound avoided by western vocalists. She has also introduced interesting and challenging sounds from her Eastern palette into a Western repertoire.
At the same time, Saira is capable of interjecting more open vowel sounds when singing eastern classical music, something very unusual. She is gifted with a double toolkit of technical skills of contrasting colour: two types of vibrato, two types of trills, and so on. Drawing from this, she performs musical gymnastics, moving smoothly from eastern raag style to western classical mode in a single breath. She has created a signature sound appreciated by music lovers from both sides of the globe. The media dubbed this-Sufi Opera®!
In a world where traditions meet, fuse, transform one another, this is more of a coming together than a taking over. Sufi style expressions exist in many cultures. They express the desire of mankind to find meaning, to transcend everyday life by searching for the eternity that is in every human heart. Saira’s music itself, not just the words, becomes a means of expressing spiritual values in dramatic form, exploring moral dilemmas, emotional encounters of ‘the other’ and values of good and evil through the transformative relationships found in the midst of difference. Her new genre, a unifying, spiritual Sufi-Opera®, is form of operatic drama capable of promoting peace and equality in our conflicted world.
Saira’s first Sufi-Opera® work is Marvi’s Sorrows. This ground breaking work is a collaborative effort, being developed under the direction of Jonny Danciger (MA Composition, Oxford). Jonny is a stage director, designer and composer from London. As an Opera Director, he has worked with the Royal Opera House, British Youth Opera and provided opera design for Tokyo Metropolitan Opera, Oxford Playhouse and many others.
Left to right, Saira’s creative team: Jonny Danciger MA; Paul Knight; Zafar Francis MA; Stephen Smith MA
The work has been written by British librettist Zafar Francis (MA London). The composer is Paul Knight (Royal College of Music, London), a composer and classical pianist from London. He has regularly composed for the Oxford Shakespeare Company, Bedouin Shakespeare Company/Globe Theatre (Rome), and is the Composer of upcoming Sufi Opera® ‘Marvi’s Sorrows’. The artistic team also includes Stephen Smith MA, ethnomusicologist and musician, specialising in the musical heritage of the Indus Valley. Get your first taste of the unifying, peace seeking, spiritual voice of Sufi Opera® by listening to the aria below:-