Niloufar Shiri & Bahar Badieitabar+ Parsa Ferdowsi

Niloufar Shiri & Bahar Badieitabar:

Kamancheh player and composer Niloufar Shiri began her musical journey at the Tehran Music Conservatory in Iran. She later immigrated to the USA and pursued her studies in composition at the University of California, San Diego, and Integrated Composition, Improvisation, and Technology (ICIT) at the University of California, Irvine.

Niloufar’s musical world lies at the intersection of classical Iranian music, contemporary music, and improvisation. Her focus revolves around exploring the concept of displacement in relation to familiar and distant environments. Her music closely examines textural and timbral spaces, drawing inspiration from staggered pitch relations found in the Radif, as well as bird sounds, noise, and feedback. Her unique and radical approach to kamancheh performance significantly expands the sonic capabilities of the instrument and places her at the forefront of its practice.

Bahar Badieitabar is an Iranian Oud player and composer, recently graduated on a full scholarship with a double major in composition and performance from Berklee College of Music. At the age of 12, Bahar began her musical training at the Tehran Music School, where she earned her high school diploma in music. She studied under notable oud players, including Siavash Roshan, Negar Bouban, and Yurdal Tukcan. Bahar won first place at the Iranian Youth National Music Festival for two consecutive years at ages 16 and 17. She has performed as both a performer and composer at numerous venues, including the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, MCG Jazz, and Groton Hill Music Center, as well as at music festivals in Iran and the United States, collaborating with musicians of diverse backgrounds.

In 2017, Bahar began her undergraduate studies in Oud Performance at the University of Tehran before moving to the United States to study at Berklee. She has studied and worked with acclaimed musicians such as Marti Epstein, Kris Davis, and Alain Mallet, and has been a part of Berklee's Institute of Jazz Gender and Justice since 2022.

Bahar's background contributes to her authentic composition approach, rooted in Iranian classical music, contemporary concert music, and jazz. Currently, she is a member of Danilo Perez's Global Jazz Messengers. She has shared the stage with Grammy-winning, world-renowned musicians, including John Patitucci, Brian Blade, Danilo Perez and Bruno Raberg.

Parsa Ferdowsi:

is an Iranian composer/performer/multi-instrumentalist and multi-media artist. He works with sounds, images, words, situations, expectations, Iranian dastgahi music, forms and frames. His creative purview includes performance art, poetry, text-image, sound design, video art, improvisation, Iranian music (especially dastgahi music), community building, and archiving. His compositions challenge the pre-defined roles and definitions of music making and concert performance through interdisciplinary approaches, collaborative environments and playing around with collective memory and perception of continuity. As an improviser he implements some of his compositional techniques and issues around decision making alongside the language and affordances of Iranian Dastaghi music.He has regularly worked with artists such as Nat Baldwin, Mat Wellins, Michael Pestel, Ramtin Mokhtari, Manuel J. Perez, Shawn O’Sullivan, Eliza Marovitz, Katarina Mazur, Tobias Haus, Sam Boston, Emma Mistele, Loren Wang, Marie Carroll, Xingyan Guo, Negar Soleymanifar. He has also had the chance to collaborate on some projects with Peter Zummo, David Vantieghem, Alex Waterman (as a part of the Arthur Russell’s City Park project led by Nick Hallet), David Behrman, Nicolas Collins, Lea Bertucci, Wesleyan Laptop Ensemble, Pamplemousse Ensemble and String Noise Duo. He is also a liminal member of Shiraz Ensemble. He is currently studying Experimental Music/Performance in the graduate program at Wesleyan University. He holds a BA in Composition from the Tehran University of Art and has years of experience studying santur and Radif of Iranian Dastgahi music with Majid Kiani.

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