Diār

Shahab Paranj is an Iranian composer, instrumentalist, and educator. He is considered a generational pioneer, with a bold compositional style that integrates Persian and Western composition techniques. Paranj holds degrees in music composition from the San Francisco Conservatory of Music (BM), the Manhattan School of Music (MM), and the University of California, Los Angeles (Ph.D.).

Paranj’s recent commissions include works for ensembles including the Russian String Orchestra, Intersection Contemporary Music Ensemble, Long Beach Opera, Aleron Trio, San Francisco New Music Ensemble and Sopraduo. Paranj is also the founder and artistic director of “du vert à l’infini” a contemporary music festival in the Franche Comte region in France. He is also the founder and director of The Iranshahr Orchestra. His original score for the movie “Dressage,” was the winner of the 2018 feature film in the Berlin Film Festival.

Known as a tombak virtuoso, Paranj has performed, recorded, and collaborated with numerous highly respected musicians worldwide. He was a member of the Iran National TV & Radio Symphony Orchestra as a cellist for eight years, and for fourteen years as served as a percussionist for the Shams Ensemble.

Paranj’s research on the complex rhythm of Persian Āvāzi style music was selected to be presented at AMS-SEM-SMT 2023 joint annual meeting in New Orleans, and he has received formal recognition from the Mehr Humanitarian Society (2010) and The City and County of San Francisco (2011) for his contribution to introducing Persian music to the world.

Sohrab Pournazeri, virtuoso of tanbour, kamancheh, and setar, is one of the pioneers of performing Iranian contemporary music. His father Kaykhosro Pournazeri, who started Shams Ensemble in 1980, is one of the most respected composers and tanbour player in Iran, Sohrab joined Shams Ensemble at the age of twelve, and since then, he has been performing, recording, and collaborating with many world-class musicians worldwide.

As a composer, he has composed for great Iranian singers such as Mohammad Reza Shajarian, Homayoun Shajarian, Alireza Ghorbani, and many more. His 30 Project and 300 in Tehran’s historical Saadābād Palace complex were the most significant multi-media projects over the past forty years in Iran.

With “tones of pure gold” (Washington Post), Michelle Rice brings to her work a rich timbre and performance intensity. Before a recent change to dramatic soprano repertoire, Rice was hailed as a standout in mezzo repertoire, appearing in such roles as Herodias (Salome), Suzuki (Madama Butterfly), Flora Bervoix (La traviata) with companies including West Bay Opera, Opera San José, Fresno Grand Opera, Opera Cleveland, Annapolis Opera, Pasadena Opera, New Orleans Opera, and other organizations throughout the United States.

Rice is exploring producing new classical works for the voice as an additional creative avenue. In 2021, she commissioned, produced, and performed a video recital of new works for the voice by UCLA student composers called Song Gallery. In 2022, she commissioned, fully produced, and performed a one-act chamber opera about Lady Macbeth called The Queen, My Lord, Is Dead. The premiere of The Queen was an outstanding success, and the creative team is preparing a studio recording of the opera for release and pursuing additional productions of the work.

Rice holds degrees from the University of Washington (Bachelor of Music), the University of Maryland Opera Studio (Master of Music), and the University of California Los Angeles (Doctor of Musical Arts).

An internationally renowned percussionist, Pejman Hadadi is a proficient player of tombak and daf, the two drums of Iranian classical and folk musics. For the past thirty years, he has been teaching traditional styles of tombak playing and the theory of Persian rhythmic cycles to students in the US, Europe, and Iran. He received the prestigious Durfee Foundation Master Musician Award twice for dissemination and propagation of Persian music in the US. Since 1999, Pejman has composed a large body of music for dance, which he has performed extensively in international festivals with renowned Iranian master musicians, dancers and choreographers.

Grammy-Award winning composer Richard Danielpour has established himself as one of the most gifted and sought-after composers of his generation. His music has attracted an international and illustrious array of champions, and, as a devoted mentor and educator, he has also had a significant impact on the younger generation of composers. His list of commissions include some of the most celebrated artists of our day including Yo-Yo Ma, Jessye Norman, DawnUpshaw, Susan Graham, Emanuel Ax, Gil Shaham, Frederica von Stade, Thomas Hampson, Gary Graffman, Anthony McGill, the Kalichstein-Laredo-Robinson Trio, the Guarneri and Emerson String Quartets, the New York City, Pacific Northwest and Nashville Ballets, and institutions such as the New York Philharmonic, Philadelphia Orchestra, Maryinsky and Vienna Chamber Orchestras, Orchestre National de France, Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival, and many more. With Nobel Laureate Toni Morrison, Danielpour created Margaret Garner, his first opera, which premiered in 2005 and had a second production with New York City Opera. He has received two awards from the American Academy and Institute of Arts & Letters, a Guggenheim Award, the Bearns Prize from Columbia University, two Roc Foundation Fellowships, and The Berlin Prize from the American Berlin. He served on the composition faculty of Manhattan School of Music from 1993 to 2017. Danielpour recently relocated to Los Angeles, where he has accepted the position of Professor of Music at the Herb Alpert School of Music at UCLA. He is also a member of the faculty of the Curtis Institute of Music where he has taught since 1997.

Professor of composition at the Carnegie Mellon University, Iranian Composer Reza Vali is known as the “Persian Bartók,” given that he combines traditional work with modern compositional techniques. He has received numerous honors and commissions, and his music has been performed worldwide and is recorded on the Naxos, New Albion, MMC, Ambassador, Albany, and ABC Classics labels. Mr. Vali has been a faculty member of the School of Music at Carnegie Mellon University since 1988. He has received numerous honors and commissions, including the honor prize of the Austrian Ministry of Arts and Sciences, two Andrew W. Mellon Fellowships, commissions from the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, the Boston Modern Orchestra Project, the Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble, Kronos Quartet, the Carpe Diem String Quartet, the Seattle Chamber Players, and the Arizona Friends of Chamber Music, as well as grants from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, The Pittsburgh Foundation, and the Pittsburgh Board of Public Education. He was selected by the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust as the Outstanding Emerging Artist for which he received the Creative Achievement Award. Vali’s orchestral compositions have been performed in the United States by the Pittsburgh Symphony, the Seattle Symphony, the Boston Modern Orchestra Project, the Baltimore Symphony, the Memphis Symphony Orchestra, and Orchestra 2001. His chamber works have received performances by Cuarteto Latinoamericano, the Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble, the Carpe Diem String Quartet, Kronos Quartet, the Seattle Chamber Players, and the Da Capo Chamber Players.

Violin: Xenia Deviatkina-Loh

Violin: Mona Tian

Viola: Ben Bartelt

Cello: Niall Taro Ferguson