A live performance of Give Water to Birds by ZÖJ is an intimate, immersive journey into the spaces between sound and silence. Expect music that feels alive—haunting, raw, and filled with the quiet intensity of something deeply personal yet universal. 

Gelareh Pour’s voice resonates like a memory, singing in Persian with a richness that transcends language. Her Kamancheh draws melodies that seem both timeless and fleeting, grounding the music in a sense of place while reaching for something far beyond. Brian O’Dwyer’s drumming flows with unpredictable energy—sometimes erupting, sometimes pulling back—each rhythm crafted with an instinctive precision that leaves room for the unexpected. Brett Langsford’s guitar like whispered conversations, filling the spaces with warmth and resonance, binding the music together in unspoken understanding.

This is music that lingers in the air, holding its breath just long enough to draw you in. Each piece unfolds with a quiet urgency, blending improvisation with the delicacy of Persian poetry, inviting listeners into its meditative yet emotionally charged world. Themes of homesickness and longing ripple through every note, evoking the ache of leaving and the solace of returning.

The audience can expect to feel both rooted and untethered, connected yet adrift in a soundscape that invites reflection as much as presence. It is not music of finality or resolution but of possibility—a quiet offering that speaks to the heart in a language beyond words, carrying the weight of what cannot be said but can only be felt.

Give Water to Birds emerged from a moment that feels both accidental and inevitable, like discovering a rare and unexpected bloom in a landscape you thought you knew. ZÖJ—Gelareh Pour and Brian O’Dwyer—invite Brett Langsford, an artist they have long admired but never played with before, to join them, the trio gathered in uncharted musical terrain. The result is music imbued with the profound interplay of presence and absence, connection and distance. Seamless improvisation, where Gelareh’s haunting vocals and Persian kamancheh trace melodies that seem drawn from the earth itself, while Brian’s rhythms fracture and reform with an intuitive ferocity, and Brett’s guitar murmurs like a patient observer, steadying the spaces between. Together, their music creates a place outside time, where sound is a language beyond words, a vehicle for emotions that cannot be spoken but can only be felt.