Listen to a playlist for transitional times, selected by Ava Rasti

Welcome back to Selections, a series of artist-curated playlists from those in the know.

Iranian-born composer, pianist and bass guitarist Ava Rasti began her musical journey in an underground post-punk band in Tehran, but in recent years has focused her attention on her solo work, exploring the intersections of classical music and ambient–drone.

Her most recent work, The River, grew out of an artist residency at Fabrica in Italy, where visits to the Piave River – once a site of wartime devastation, now a place for reflection – shaped its concept and sound. Concerned with how a location can both hold and hide memories, the album reflects on the way time and perspective can create unreliable narrators. Across its seven tracks, Rasti illustrates these ideas by taking small sequences from famous classical pieces and replaying them until they become unrecognisable.

Next month, in a commissioned performance by Semibreve under the Re-Imagine Europe programme, Rasti will present The River live alongside a string quartet.

Whether piecing together fragments of the past or sculpting serenity from distortion, Rasti’s music leans into transition and transformation, and for this playlist, she gathers the tracks that resonate with those ideas. “These are the songs I picked up while drifting between places; wrapped in transitions, tugged by nostalgia, like an invisible blanket draped over me,” she explains.

Listen below.