Aida Shirazi (born 1987)
Aida Shirazi was born and raised in Tehran where she received formal training in both Western and Iranian classical music. She received a degree in classical piano from the University of Art in Tehran and a B.M. in music composition and theory from Bikent University in Turkey. She is currently a PhD candidate in composition at the University of California, Davis.
Her Lullaby for Shattered Angels is a 2014 composition for flute, viola, and harp. The description of this video indicates that it is based on a Kurdish lullaby that Aida Shirazi had heard sung by an Iranian Kurdish singer. She writes at at the time she composed this work,
I was involved with the idea of using pre-existing musical materials in my music. I wrote a few pieces in which I quoted Iranian classical or folk melodies and based the entire compositional process on them.
About her 2017 string quartet “Umbra”, Aida Shirazi has written:
umbra is a process, in which musical events unfold glacially. Writing this piece, I sought to create a shadow-like quality; a sonic umbra. The work emerges from a dark and quiet state and after several dynamic and textural swells and contractions fades into the void.
Blood Moon is a 2020 composition for clarinet and string quartet:
The description in the video indicates that the title comes from closing paragraph of the Prayer by the Armenian poet Siamanto:
…And the dark night was deserted, like the vast infinite;
And, with the lonely and bloody moon,
Like a myriad motionless marble statues,
All the dead bodies of our earth arose to pray for one another.
The composition also makes use of the Armenian folk song, “Loosin Valav” (The Moon Has Risen).