Organization Bios
International Contemporary Ensemble strives to cultivate a mosaic musical ecosystem that honors the diversity of human experience and expression by commissioning, developing, and performing the works of living artists. The Ensemble is a collective of musicians, digital media artists, producers, and educators who are committed to creating collaborations built on equity, belonging, and cultural responsiveness. Now in its third decade, the Ensemble continues to build new digital and live collaborative environments that strengthen artist agency and musical connections around the world. https://iceorg.org/
Founded in 2017, The Iranian Female Composers Association (IFCA) is designed to enrich the community of contemporary art and music. Its mission is to empower Iranian women and non-binary creators in the diaspora in music and in the arts by fostering originality, honoring diversity, and strengthening equality.
Cheswatyr Commissions is created and produced by Composers Now with underwriting from the Cheswatyr Foundation. The award commemorates Cece Wasserman and foregrounds her legacy of empowering living composers in substantive ways. Cece was a passionate arts philanthropist and untiring advocate for the composers of our time. Under her leadership, the Foundation commissioned works from a stellar list of composers including Missy Mazzoli, Arlene Sierra and Julia Wolfe.
Composers Now, founded and led since 2010 by Tania León, composer, conductor, educator, advisor to arts organizations and, most recently, a 2022 Kennedy Center Honors recipient and 2021 Pulitzer Prizewinner for Stride, commissioned and premiered by The New York Philharmonic. Its mission is to empower living composers (regardless of race, ethnicity, religion, gender), celebrate the diversity of their artistic voices (contemporary classical, jazz, concert, music theater, experimental, sound art, improvised, electronic) and honor the significance of their contributions to the cultural fabric of society. Programs include: an annual February Festival aggregating and promoting events across the five boroughs, with an Opening Event that features the presentation of Composers Now First Commission, supported by Michael Minard, and Visionary Awards; twice-monthly virtual IMPACT series offerings – presentations, each from a single composer sharing insights about their creativity, career aims and project examples; Dialogues and Composer Curator series – performances with conversations between hosts, composers and audiences; Collaborative Creative Residencies in partnership with the Pocantico Center of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund and the Asian Cultural Council; and commissioning and career development/mentoring programs: Second Stage engages graduates of the Luna Composition Lab, founder-led by composers Missy Mazzoli and Ellen Reid, supported by the Toulmin Foundation; and Cheswatyr Commissions, supported by the Cheswatyr Foundation. WQXR is a media sponsor of Composers Now. www.composersnow.org
Suzanne Farrin, winner of the Rome Prize and a Guggenheim Fellow, explores the interior worlds of instruments and the visceral potentialities of sound in her music. Opportunities to hear her music this season include a Composer Portrait in February 2023 at Miller Theatre which will feature International Contemporary Ensemble’s world premiere performance of Farrin’s Their Hearts are Columns and selections from dolce la morte, an opera based on the love poems of Michelangelo, commissioned by the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Suzanne is currently Professor and Chair of Music at Hunter College after 10 years leading the Composition Department at the Conservatory of Music at Purchase College, S.U.N.Y. She holds a doctorate in composition from Yale University. Corpo di Terra (New Focus Recordings) is devoted entirely to her music, which may also be heard on the VAI, Signum Classics, Tundra and Albany Records labels. In addition to composing, Suzanne is a performer of the ondes Martenot, an early electronic instrument created by the engineer Maurice Martenot in France in the 1920s as a response to the simultaneous destruction and technological advances of WWI. Her life as an interpreter on the instrument has taken her to venues such as The Kitchen for the premiere of The Stimulus of Loss (commissioned by Claire Chase for Density 2036) and the Abrons Arts Center in NYC, the Centro de Artes in Buenos Aires and television, where she was featured in an episode directed by Roman Coppola on the Amazon series Mozart in the Jungle. She is featured as a performer in Chicuarotes, directed by Gael García Bernal, which ran in theaters throughout Mexico and was premiered at Cannes, as well as the Iranian film Sade Ma’bar (Blockage) directed by Mohsen Gharaie, which won best film in the New Currents section of the Busan International Film FestivaL. https://suzannefarrin.com/index.html
Roxanne Nesbitt
Roxanne Nesbitt is a designer, musician, and sound artist of Indo-Caribbean and European ancestry. Her research explores radical instrument design, the interconnection between composition and improvisation, and participatory sound installation. With formal studies including architecture and classical double bass, Roxanne composes and performs with self-made instruments and a strong visual consideration. Roxanne believes new instruments can facilitate explorations of sound free from colonial legacies of exclusion and perfectionism. She celebrates process making work that is intimate, inquisitive, and exploratory. Roxanne is currently based on the unceded territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh Nations (Vancouver, CA). https://roxannenesbitt.com/
Composer Bios
Anahita Abbasi’s music has been described as “a dizzyingly sophisticated reverie, colorful and energetic. It embodies tremendous timbral exploration and multilayered performance gestures”… (Classical Voice America and A Cunning plan). Her upcoming projects include a commission from derglebe Klang ensemble to be presented on November 13, 2022 in Munich, and a commission from Ensembe modern for Darmstadt 2023. She is currently oscillating between New York and Paris as part of her one-year residency with Ensemble Le Balcon (France). She teaches composition, giving lectures and curating workshops on fundamentals of creation, and serving as a juror at composition competitions. She is also a founding member of Schallfeld Ensemble in Graz, Austria as well as IFCA (Iranian Female Composers Association) in New York City; where she is curating concerts, workshops, conferences, creating platforms and advocating for young composers and acts as their ambassadors in presenting their music to others. Anahita Abbasi (world citizen-1985) was born and raised in Iran. In 2005 she moved to Austria and pursued her undergrad at the University of Music and Performing Arts Graz, where she studied music theory with Clemens Gadenstätter and Christian Utz & composition with Beat Furrer and Pierluigi Billone; while working closely with Georges Aperghis, Franck Bedrossian, and Philippe Leroux. Since 2014, Abbasi is currently finishing her Ph.D. in composition under the supervision of Rand Steiger at the University of California San Diego. https://anahitaabbasi.com/
Golfam Khayam‘s music is described by AL Jazeera as “Innovative Art” Iranian composer & improviser, and being described as “a perfect testament to the universality of music.” Winner of Rostrum of Composer “windows of the world” in Paris, as well as recipient of Arvo Part Center annual scholarship prize residency. Golfam has appeared extensively as performer,composer, and her music is being performed worldwide, spreading her musical message in various projects which has been featured as in Elbphilharmonie, NPR “songs we love”, Danish Cultural Radio, BBC3, Deutchewele, opera America. Since 2016 she has been signed with prestigious German record label ECM records. She has appeared as guest lecturer and jury member in prestigious music institutions such as SOAS, HEM Geneve, University of London, Copenhagen Royal Conservatory, Tehran Art University, Belgrade Music Academy, among many others. Golfam has been receiving commission works worldwide by highly recognized musicians,ensembles as well as film music and multimedia, this partly include Opera aix en provence, Klangwerkstatt Berlin, New West Symphony USA, Multimod Geneve Festival d’improvisation, Kiarostami Legendary filmmaker. Based on her experience and education in Western classical music, as well as throughout many years of research on traditional Persian ethnic music around Iran , she has developed a personal language which reframes the two worlds of middle eastern music and western music in contemporary compositions. She is the winner of a full fellowship for her project “New Vocabulary” from HES-SO in Switzerland, for creative research in bringing instrumental and vocal adaptations of Persian traditional music into new forms. Golfam Khayam was born and grew up in Iran in a family of artists in Tehran. She holds the “Master of Music” from the College-Conservatory of Music, University of Cincinnati. Master of Interprétation Specialisée Solist and master of composition at Geneva University in Switzerland, and electronic improvisation courses in IRCAM. She is currently associate professor in Tehran Art University. https://www.golfamkhayam.com/
Nasim Khorassani is an Iranian composer and a PhD candidate in Music Composition at the University of California San Diego. Nasim’s music takes various approaches to visuality, emotional connection, and language. Mainly as a self-taught composer, Nasim started composing at eight. However, her works did not receive any performance in Iran until 2016, when she moved to the United States. Since then, her works have been performed by No Exit New Music Ensemble, Del Sol String Quartet, Patchwork Duo, Zeitgeist, OCAZEnigma, and Loadbang. During her life in Iran, she created and organized a group of music students that received the DAAD Study Visit scholarship in 2009 as the first Iranian group. Nasim has founded a free online music academy, MMCiran, to support Persian students, which is now called and co-founded as MOAASER. https://www.nkhorassani.com/
Kimia Koochakzadeh-Yazdi is a California/Vancouver-based composer and performer. She writes for hybrid instrumental/electronic ensembles, creates electroacoustic and audiovisual works, and performs electronic music. Kimia explores the unfamiliar familiar while constantly being driven by the concepts of motion, interaction, and growth in both human life and in the sonic world. Being a cross-disciplinary artist, she has actively collaborated on projects evolving around dance, film, and theatre. Kimia’s work has been showcased by organizations such as Iranian Female Composer Association, Music on Main, Western Front, Vancouver New Music, and Media Arts Committee. She has been featured in The New York Times, Georgia Straight, MusicWorks Magazine, Vancouver Sun, and Sequenza 21. Her work has been performed at festivals around the world including Ars Electronica Festival, Festival Ecos Urbanos, Tehran Contemporary Sounds, AudioVisual Frontiers Virtual Exhibition, The New York City Electroacoustic Music Festival, Yarn/Wire Institute, Ensemble Evolution, New Music on the Point, wasteLAnd Summer Academy, EQ: Evolution of the String Quartet, Modulus Festival, and SALT New Music Festival. She holds a BFA in Music Composition from Simon Fraser University’s Interdisciplinary School for the Contemporary Arts, having studied with Sabrina Schroeder and Mauricio Pauly. Kimia is currently pursuing her DMA in Music Composition at Stanford University. https://kimiakoochakzadehyazdi.com/
Born and raised in Iran, Bahar Royaee is a music educator and a composer/sound designer who works within the field of concert music and various media arts. The Boston Arts Review praised Bahar’s “haunting sound design” in her work with live Theatre. Bahar’s work has been performed at prominent events such as the Tempus Konnex ICE Festival 2022 Germany, ICE Factory off Broadway Festival, Time:Spans 2020 Festival, the 2020 Fromm Foundation Composer Conference, 2022 Tehran Electroacoustic Music Festival, and has won awards such as the Pnea Award, the Roger Session Memorial Composition Award, and the Korourian electroacoustic music award. Bahar, has worked with Claire Chase, Suzanne Farrin, International Contemporary Ensemble, Jack Quartet, Loadbang, Contemporary Insights of Leipzig, Ensemble der gelbe Klang, Guerrilla Opera, Longleash, Mazumal, Kimia Hesabi, Splice Ensemble, to name a few. She is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in music composition from City University of New York, studying with Jason Eckardt and Suzanne Farrin. https://soundcloud.com/bahar-royaee
Born and raised in Tehran, Iran, Aida Shirazi (1987) is a composer of acoustic and electroacoustic music. Shirazi’s music is described as ”unfolding with deliberation” by The New York Times, “well-made” and “affecting” by The New Yorker, and “unusually creative” by San Francisco Classical Voice. In her works for solo instruments, voice, ensemble, orchestra, and electronics, she mainly focuses on timbre for organizing structures inspired by Persian and other languages and literature. Shirazi’s music has been featured at festivals and concert series, including Manifeste, Mostly Mozart, OutHear New Music Week, MATA, Marlboro Music Festival, Direct Current, Taproot, and Tehran Contemporary Music Festival in venues such as Carnegie Hall, Maison de la Radio France, Lincoln Center, and Kennedy Center. Her works are performed by Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, Miranda Cuckson, International Contemporary Ensemble, Oerknal, Quince Ensemble, Ensemble Dal Niente, Left Coast Chamber Ensemble, Empyrean Ensemble, and Bilkent Symphony Orchestra, among others. Shirazi has earned her Ph.D. in composition and music theory from the University of California, Davis. She has studied with Mika Pelo, Pablo Ortiz, Kurt Rohde, Yiğit Aydın, Tolga Yayalar, Onur Türkmen, and Hooshyar Khayam. Shirazi has participated in workshops and masterclasses by Kaija Saariaho, Mark Andre, Riccardo Piacentini, Zeynep Gedizlioğlu, and Füsun Köksal, among others. She holds her B.A. in classical piano from Tehran University of Art (Iran) and her B.M. in music composition and theory from Bilkent University (Ankara, Turkey). She has studied santoor (traditional Iranian hammered dulcimer) with Parissa Khosravi Samani. Shirazi is an alumna of IRCAM’s “Cursus Program in Composition and Computer Music.” https://soundcloud.com/aida-shirazi
Nina Barzegar is a composer, pianist, educator, and actor. She is a graduate of the University of Tehran in the field of piano performance and composition and is currently a Ph.D. student at the University of California-Santa Cruz. Nina writes music in diverse styles including contemporary music, compositions based on Iranian classical music, and tutorial compositions for piano. As an actor and film scorer, she has collaborated on many short and feature film projects and has participated at various film festivals. Nina has been also working as a piano educator for years and authored a two-volume piano training book and is working on her third book in which she puts emphasis on Persian music rhythm. https://music.ucsc.edu/people/nina-barzegar
Described as “stark” by WNPR, and “darkly lyrical” by the New York Times, winner of 2nd Hildegard competition, recipient of 2019 Female Discovery Grant from Opera America, and a winner of Beth Morrison Projects Next Generation Competition, Iranian-American composer Niloufar Nourbakhsh’s music has been commissioned and performed by Nashville Symphony Orchestra, Library of Congress, I-Park Foundation, National Sawdust Ensemble, International Contemporary Ensemble, Center for Contemporary Opera, Women Composers Festival of Hartford, PUBLIQuartet, Forward Music Project, Calidore String Quartet, Cassatt String Quartet, Akropolis Reed Quintet, and Ensemble Connect at numerous festivals and venues including Carnegie Hall, Washington Kennedy Center, Mostly Mozart Festival, Seal Bay Festival of American Chamber Music, and many more. A founding member and co-director of Iranian Female Composers Association, Nilou is a strong advocate of music education. In 2014, she worked as the site coordinator of Brooklyn Middle School Jazz Academy sponsored by Jazz at Lincoln Center. She is currently an adjunct faculty at Peabody Conservatory as co-artistic director of Peabody Laptop Orchestra, and she regularly performs with her ensemble, Decipher.Nilou is a music graduate and a Global Citizen Scholarship recipient of Goucher Collegeas well as a Mahoney and Caplan Scholar from University of Oxford. Among her teachers are Lisa Weiss, Laura Kaminsky, Daniel Weymouth, Matthew Barnson, Margaret Schedel and Daria Semegen. She received a Ph.D. in music composition from Stony Brook University under the supervision of Sheila Silver. https://niloufarnourbakhsh.com/
Niloufar Shiri is a kamancheh player and composer from Tehran, Iran. Her music carefully weaves the musical and poetic structures of traditional Iranian music with noise and electronics, to produce music that explores the contemporary soundscape of a displaced Iran. Niloufar’s upcoming projects include pieces for CAMPGround Festival, Cape Symphony and Jack Quartet. Niloufar received her B.A. with Honors in composition at UC San Diego in 2017 and a M.A. in Integrated Composition, Improvisation, and Technology from UC Irvine in 2022. In conjunction with her studies, she has performed research, funded from a grant from the National Endowment of the Arts in 2012, on Iranian classical music at UC Irvine. The results of this research can be found at pish-radif.com.