This spring, Boston College’s Institute for Liberal Arts will host an interdisciplinary symposium entitled The Kurdish Question: Ethnicity, Identity, and Integration April 24th and 27th–28th. Involving departments ranging from Music to Political Science, this symposium will include events from Kurdish film screenings to lectures and panel discussions. On the symposium’s last evening, the internationally acclaimed Hugo Wolf String Quartet of Vienna will premiere Imagined Memories, Associate Professor Ralf Gawlick’s newest composition.

Imagined Memories, or Bîraninen Xeyalî, is an autobiographical piece that, in Gawlick’s words, “probes into the realms of a relationship that never was, a bond with my biological mother whom I never met.” Gawlick was born to a young Kurdish woman, Naciye Zeren, who risked much to ensure his life. Leaving him in an orphanage in Germany she returned home. Drawing from this experience, Gawlick believes that the preservation of our identities “depends upon the active presence and cultivation of memory, real or imagined,” and this is exactly what this piece aims to do. In his words, “Imagined Memories is my musical archive: intimate musical reflections based on imagined memories of a distant, severed past.” As the piece is played, the listener is brought through a series of musical memories, from Gawlick imagining his own, to him imagining those of Naciye, and finally to Naciye’s.

Boston College is proud to host the Hugo Wolf Quartet, which is coming expressly to perform this piece. Founded in Vienna in 1993, the Quartet soon won coveted awards such as the Special Prize of the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra and the European Chamber Music Prize. The Hugo Wolf Quartet has become a major name in the international chamber music scene, and it performs its own concert series in the renowned Wiener Konzerthaus Concert Hall in Vienna.

The concert will be held on April 28 in St. Mary’s Chapel at 7:30 p.m. It will be followed by a performance of the work in Carnegie Hall on April 29. It is sure to be a stunning debut, so be sure to mark it in your calendar.