Iranian Music had been on a two-decade hiatus at UCLA, until 2016 when instructor Amir Hosein Pourjavady – a Bruin who received his Ph.D. in Near Eastern Languages and Cultures from UCLA – returned to UCLA, working with The UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music Department of Ethnomusicology to revive the Persian Music Ensemble and related seminars. A key group of individual donors with vision and a passion for Iranian Music gave generously to sustain the program quarter by quarter. Now, a two-year gift from Roshan Cultural Heritage Institute for $60,000 is providing vital funding to keep the ensemble and seminars available for the near future.
The Elahe Omidyar Mir-Djalali Fund for Iranian Music will support the ongoing Persian Music Ensemble, a popular class with a quarterly waitlist of students eager to learn more, the annual ensemble concert, seminars in Iranian Music, and related concerts, lectures and public events. The first public event supported by the Fund is the upcoming “Classical Persian Music: Hossein Omoumi, from Isfahan to Irvine,” on Monday, February 5 at 7 pm in Schoenberg Hall. More details here.
Roshan Cultural Heritage Institute, which was founded by Mir-Djalali in 2000, supports cultural and educational activities and nurtures new educators who can preserve the transmission and instruction of Persian language and culture. The institute has awarded several million dollars in grants to establish and strengthen Persian academic programs at prestigious universities in the U.S. and around the world, including the Elahe Omidyar Mir-Djalali Fellowship for Excellence in Persian Studies, which was established at UCLA in 2002, and most recently, the Elahe Omidyar Mir-Djalali Postdoctoral Fellowship in Iranian Linguistics at UCLA.