Aida Shirazi (born and raised in Tehran) 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. She is a co-founder and board member of the Iranian Female Composers Association (IFCA). In her works for solo instruments, voice, ensemble, orchestra, and electronics she mainly focuses on timbre for organizing structures that are often inspired by Persian or English languages and literature, as well as Iranian classical music. Currently, Shirazi is a Ph.D. candidate of composition at the University of California, Davis, and works with Mika Pelo. She has studied with Pablo Ortiz, Kurt Rohde, Yiğit Aydın, Tolga Yayalar, Onur Türkmen, and Hooshyar Khayam as well as participating in workshops and masterclasses by Mark Andre, Claus-Steffen Mahnkopf, Riccardo Piacentini, and Füsun Köksal, among others. Shirazi 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 (Turkey). During the years 1998-2004, she studied santoor (traditional Iranian hammered dulcimer) with Parissa Khosravi Samani. Shirazi is a participant of IRCAM’s “Cursus Program in Composition and Computer Music” in the academic year 2021-22.
Orbis. The piece was originally commissioned by ‘Long Beach Opera’ As Part Of “Songbook 2020” and later on a certain mastered edition of it is released among the pieces in the compilation.”Orbis” is a fixed media work based on a quatrain by Omar Khayyam.According to Khayyam, good and evil are inherent to human nature. So, we are the agents of perfection and failure in this world. In my work, I tried to create an abstract space that embraces the text. The words don’t dominate that space.