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ICOT is a non-profit organisation founded in 2011 by five Toronto-based composers and musicians with the mission of creating new works that bridge Canadian and Iranian culture through music and art. ICOT’s current members are Saman Shahi (executive director), Keyan Emami (artistic director), and Maziar Heidari (music director). ICOT has produced two operas, two ballets, twelve orchestral works, dozens of chamber works and vocal works, as well as three calls for scores that allowed ICOT to collaborate with over twenty composers from eight different countries. ICOT's music has been performed by Cathedral Bluffs Symphony Orchestra, Symphony on the Bay, Soundstreams, and Ton Beau String Quartet and has taken part in Toronto Symphony's 2022 Open House, Tirgan Festival, 2017 Ottawa Chamberfest, and Hamilton Philharmonic's 2014 "What Next" Festival. ICOT's first commercial recording, Persian Piano Night, was released in 2018 by Pardis Records. "The core concept of this album was repetition and its various implications in nature or the human condition. After some research, I came across the idea of erosion in ecology and various processes that enable it. Formation of sea stacks due to coastal erosion became my main point of focus and how a pillar of rock is gradually cut off from a headland cliff, forming a sea stack. This usually happens in five steps: 1. weathering 2. hydraulic action of the waves 3. formation of a sea arch 4. eventual collapses and formation of a sea stack 5. collapse of the stack My effort was to direct the form of the piece using the same five steps from stability into separation and eventual demise. Various colours in the ensemble are meant to act as different forces of erosion or natural resistance to it." - Saman Shahi (Executive Director)