Project Partners
Noise à Noise Studio Informal Leonie Roessler
Studio Informal is a collective based out of Tehran, Iran, that aims to imagine new narratives through audiovisual design, founded by pantea and Parsa, interdisciplinary musicians.
Network Members
Talieh Attarzadeh-Wartner is a PhD candidate based. in the Department of Ethnomusicology at the University for Music and Performing Arts in Graz, Austria. Her dissertation deals with sonic elements, body movements, and cultural aspects in religious and family rituals of Iranian women from ethnic and religious minorities. Her research interests include music cultures from West Asia, Southeast Asia, and ethnomusicological issues considering religious and gender aspects. Talie is the organisational assistant of the Graz KUG jazz orchestra, and is also a music educator and has taught classical guitar since her graduation in instrumental music. During her work experience, she focused on the integration of ethnomusicological topics, including sonic-cultural awareness, and introducing music cultures of the world in music pedagogy, especially in teaching classical music to children.
Shakiba Azimi has a Masters degree in ethnomusicology from Tehran University of Arts. She is Interested in the sociology and history of music. She is currently a music history teacher at Esfahan Music School and is also working on a research project: The Impact of Radio on the Transformation of Iranian Music: A Sociological Study of Music.
Hadi Bastani is a sound artist, composer and anthropologist interested in the impact of digital technologies on the emergence of new modes of thinking, practice and sociality. His research has engaged with Iran's experimental electronic music scene and is the first comprehensive academic research on this scene . His artistic and academic output has been published through international festivals including Sonorities 2018 (Belfast) and TADAEX 2017 (Tehran); public arts projects such as Soundscape Park Project 2019 (Belfast); care home interventions including Soundscape Gardens at NI Hospice 2015–2021 (Belfast); conferences such as International Conference on Live Interfaces 2018 (Porto) and British Forum for Ethnomusicology/Société Française d’Ethnomusicologie 2019 (London); and peer-reviewed journals including Ethnomusicology Forum (2021) and Critical Studies in Improvisation (2021).
Armaghan Fakhraeirad is a PhD student in Ethnomusicology at the University of Pennsylvania, working at the intersection of music, port city and Indian Ocean studies. Her research focuses on music, identity, imagination, memory and trans-regionalism in the port cities of the Persian Gulf, Iran. Previously, she earned a MA in Ethnomusicology from Tehran Art University, where she wrote a thesis on Iranian folk music revivals.
Sara Feili studied physics as an undergraduate and is currently a Masters student ethnomusicology student at the University of Tehran. She is interested in music history, gender, identity, and originality in music, especially Iranian music (dastgah) and folk music.
Samaneh Haghshenas received her BA in Iranian Music Performance from Tehran University of Art. She then completed an MA in Islamic Art Studies at the University of Science and Culture. She has worked towards mastering techniques of Santour playing by studying with some well- known figures of Iranian music. Her areas of interest include Iranian music, social and cultural studies, Islamic-Iranian art history and ethnomusicology.
Mitra and Mina Harandi both received their Master’s degrees in Ethnomusicology from the University of Tehran. Since 2010, as well as teaching piano, they have worked as music research assistants in different institutions. They were assistants to Dr Sasan Fatemi, Head of the Music Faculty at the Center for the Great Islamic Encyclopedia (CGIE) ,and have also been project collaborators for the 'Woven Sounds' documentary (carpet pattern singing in Iran), a research project at the Austrian Academy of Science (ÖAW) within the commission Vanishing Languages and Cultural Heritage (VLACH) by Mehdi Aminian.
Their research interests are focused on urban music studies, unofficial music streams in Iran, identity, social-cultural studies and popular cultures. They wrote their MA dissertation on underground music and street music in Tehran (2015).
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Amin Hashemi is an interdisciplinary researcher in musicology, anthropology, post-structuralist psychoanalysis and discourse analysis. He focuses on the links between musical creativity and subjectivity, regimes of truth and the transformation of paradigms. His PhD thesis was on antagonism in popular music of post-revolutionary Iran, focused on the events and cases between 2013 and 2018, especially in regards to the politics of culture, and the militarisation of everyday practices. His MA dissertation looked into revivalist discourses in music institutions of Pahlavi II Era (1960s) and examined how policies, artistic values and self awareness fundamentally changed the context and content of classical Iranian music.
Maziar Kanani is an Iranian musician and researcher with an interdisciplinary approach. After graduating with an MA from the Art University of Tehran, he has published a number of papers and an album while his new practical experience is more focused on scoring. His previously published papers are in the areas of rhythm, avaz and tahrir. Maziar's current research is focused on the improvisational conversation between the arts. He has taught music in a number of universities and at Esfahan conservatory for over four years.
Sevda Khatamian was born in Tehran in the summer of 1989. Since 2013, she has been generating ideas and developing projects in different mediums. True life events are her main inspiration and most of her art practices are memory projects. Sevda documents ordinary matters, insignificant moments, coincidences and random incidents to remark on their patterns, to find out their correlations and their hidden meanings once put in the perspective of time. Her visual work revolves around desolate scenes & everyday matters that are slightly out of the ordinary with essential attention to detail. Her writings are a. contemporary memoir, a mixture of real-life experiences with the world of thoughts and dreams to express isolation & loneliness; a twist of sense of humour is an inseparable aspect of my work.
After living in different parts of Turkey for eight years, Sevda now lives as an artist in residence in different countries, traveling for most of the year; creativity dawns as she moves along with the road.
Mehrnoosh Mansoorgarakani is an urban designer who researches architecture and urbanism, pursuing interdisciplinary and multifaceted approaches to the built and sensory environment. She holds a BA in Urban Studies from the University of Sheffield (UK) and an MSc from University College London in Urban Design. She is currently studying for a PhD at the University of Cardiff analysing the soundscapes of public spaces in Tehran. Her research interest encompasses the human perception of soundscape information in urban public spaces.
Laudan Nooshin is Professor of Music at City, University London, UK. Her research interests include creative processes in Iranian music, music and youth culture in Iran, music and gender, urban music studies, and music in Iranian cinema. Her publications include Iranian Classical Music: The Discourses and Practice of Creativity (2015, Ashgate), Music and the Play of Power in the Middle East, North Africa and Central Asia (ed. 2009, Ashgate) and The Ethnomusicology of Western Art Music (ed. 2013, Routledge). She is currently co-Editor of the new Cambridge University Press series Elements in Music and the City. Laudan is a Vice-President of the Royal Musical Association and co-Chair of the Equality, Diversity and Inclusion in Music Studies Network.
Mahsa Pakravan is a musician, ethnomusicologist, and music entrepreneur based in Toronto, Canada. She is the founder and artistic director of the Musication Academy in Toronto, where she has been working closely with Iranian musicians residing in the diaspora and in Iran. Mahsa holds a PhD in Music from the University of Alberta, and an MA in Art Studies and BA in Music from the University of Tehran. Her PhD research explores issues of sound and space in articulating sense(s) of identity among the residents of the Udlajan neighborhood in Tehran. Because of its focus on sound studies and sonic memories in Tehran, her doctoral research engages with a wide range of theoretical discussions on the intersection of ethnomusicology, sound studies, and urban studies. Through Udlajan residents’ sonic recollections, her research explores the neighborhood’s past soundscape to examine the role of sounds and silences in the social construction of space. As part of her dissertation, Mahsa also created a sonic-visual map of the Udlajan neighborhood to highlight the sonic changes Udlajan has gone through in the past several decades.
Payam Pilvar is a music producer, sound designer, and researcher interested in anthropology, sociology, politics and acoustics. He also composes and performs electronic music in a variety of genres, including IDM, post-rock and modern jazz. He often uses interdisciplinary approach in both his artistic and scholarly works. He holds an MA in Ethnomusicology from Tehran University of Art and is a PhD candidate in Interdisciplinary Research in Music at the University of Ottawa.
Anna Rezai gained her BA in Philosophy from the Shahid Beheshti University of Tehran and her MA in Ethnomusicology from Mimar Sinan University located in İstanbul. She completed her dissertation in 2019 studying Old and New schools of Iranian makams. Currently she is a PhD student in Istanbul Technical University Conservatory. She is working on Iranian musician’s life before and after Pandemic in Istanbul, also she worked on Acems in 18 century Turkish Music manuscript and Meragi heritage in Ottoman Music by Focusing on his son and grandson’s works.
Kamyar Salavati is an MA graduate of Architectural Studies from the University of Tehran, an architectural researcher, musicologist and music critic. He is Editor-in -chief of Dalan Quarterly (Iran), an interdisicplinary socio-cultural and urban magazine on the streets of Iran. His articles have been published in numerous architectural and music journals and magazines such as Mahoor Quarterly, Journal of Fine Arts (architecture and urbanism), JIAS (Journal of Iranian Architectural Studies), Noise Reviews, Hamshahri Me’mari, and Koubeh. He is interested in early 20th century architecture in Iran, the rehabilitation of early modern buildings, the history of music criticism in Iran, and analysis of Iranian classical music. He is currently working on a book entitled “The Architecture of Tehran Museum of Contemporary Arts”, and another on “Constitutional Era and Architecture in Iran”.
Payam Yekta is a kamancheh player and composer based in Tehran, Iran. Showing an interest in music from early childhood, he studied at Tehran music school and music has been his priority in life ever since. He is a BA and MA graduate of Iranian music performance from Tehran University of Art. In his Master's thesis, he attempted to find and develop a structure for improvisation in Iranian classical music. In addition to his solo performances in various stages and festivals, Payam has founded and worked with multiple ensembles as a performer and composer. He has worked towards mastering techniques of kamancheh playing by studying with well-known figures of Iranian music. As a composer, he has written various pieces for ensembles, theatrical performances and documentary films, exploring and discovering different aspects and potentials of world music for innovation combined with Iranian music.
Payam Yousefi (MA UCLA, 2015) is a PhD candidate in ethnomusicology at Harvard University. His primary research interests include the classical, regional and sacred musics of Iran. More broadly his work focuses on affective musical communities, women’s vocality, transmission and the intersections of music and power. Payam’s current research centers on the politics of style in classical Persian music— critically examining the exclusionary aesthetics of competing musical styles while highlighting how creative practices strategically mediate the semantics of style to project subversive notions of self, nation and global membership. Whether he is playing the kamancheh, making ethnographic films, writing or teaching, Payam is entangled in the endless pursuit of unraveling the many meanings of music.