Sahba Aminikia Among the Winners the Aga Khan Music Award
The Aga Khan Music Awards were established by His Late Highness Prince Karim Aga Khan IV in 2018. The Awards recognise and support exceptional creativity, promise, and enterprise in music performance, creation, education, preservation and revitalisation in societies across the world in which Muslims have a significant presence.
SFCM Grad Named TED Fellow in Recognition for Work with Refugees
The 2013 alumnus was named a TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) Fellow in the influential organization’s 2024 class for his work with the Flying Carpet Festival, which also led him to give one of the group’s popular TED Talks this year.
The greatest show on Earth — for kids who need it most
TED Fellow and composer Sahba Aminikia brings the healing power of dance, storytelling, music and performance to some of the most dangerous places on Earth. By celebrating children and their communities with beauty and joy, he shows how to cultivate hope, connection and love — even in conflict zones. "The ultimate power is in unity," Aminikia says.
Interview with Sahba Aminikia
His musical compositions have been widely performed around the world by ensembles including the Kronos Quartet, Brooklyn Youth Chorus, Carnegie Hall Ensemble Connect, Minnesota Philharmonic Orchestra, Symphony Parnassus, San Francisco Conservatory of Music New Music Ensemble, Mobius Trio, Delphi Trio, Amaranth Quartet, The Living Earth Show, Verdigris Ensemble, Music Of Remembrance, One Found Sound, and the Afghanistan National Institute Of Music. Phonetic Planet is so grateful to the inspirational Sahba Aminikia for sharing his positive energy with us in a recent interview!
San Francisco Comes Together in Sahba Aminikia's The Language of the Birds
In the 12th-century Persian poem The Language of the Birds (also known as The Conference of the Birds), the parallels between birds and humans are obvious, says composer Sahba Aminikia, who has been in residency at the North Beach nonprofit arts organization 836M for the past five months, working on a multimedia adaptation of the poem. Now, Aminikia’s piece is set for its world premiere, May 31 – June 1 at 836M. (Both performances are currently listed as sold out.)
Rumi’s favorite 12th century epic comes to musical life in ‘The Language of the Birds’
When nonprofit arts organization 836M announced Sahba Aminikia as its first composer-in-residence last December, a centuries-spanning collaboration began to take shape. The Iranian-born composer brought with him The Language of the Birds (May 31 and June 1), a project inspired by the 12th century poem bearing the same title by Farid ud-din Attar, a Persian mystic revered by the 13th century poet Rumi and many others.
After hundreds of years and with the support of 836M, which was co-founded by Julie & Sébastien Lépinard and Agnès Faure and named for its gallery at 836 Montgomery Street. A remarkable lineage, extending from Attar to Rumi to Aminikia to 2024 audiences, will give birth to a new work of art.
Honored to be a 2024 TED Fellow: A New Chapter for the Flying Carpet Festival
I’m incredibly honored and humbled to share that I’ve been selected as a 2024 TED Fellow! This is an exciting moment, not just for me, but for everyone involved in the Flying Carpet Festival and the community that has come together around our shared vision. The TED Fellows program celebrates a diverse group of thinkers, artists, and innovators from around the world, each committed to tackling some of society’s biggest challenges in meaningful ways. Being part of this community is truly inspiring, and it energizes me to continue my work with renewed passion:
BBC Persian Coverage of Qaqnus (Phoenix) World Premiere in Seattle (in Farsi)
"Iranian women experience discrimination through law and custom that profoundly impacts their lives, especially concerning marriage, divorce, and child custody. Since the 1979 revolution, laws forcing women to wear Islamic hijab restrict every moment of their lives in public, and also stand symbolically for a much larger realm of inequality.
In September 2022, Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Iranian woman died in hospital while under the custody of Iranian “morality police” who had arrested her for not wearing proper hijab. Her death sparked widespread public protests across Iran and further arrests, including that of 16-year-old Nika Shakarami. Ten days after Nika disappeared, her family was informed of her death, under suspicious circumstances believed to involve violence by security forces. The protests continued for months. After harshly repressive measures, they have ended, for now, but the issues remain alive.
“Children have more imagination than we do”
Circus and theatre for refugee children in the middle of a conflict-torn area? The Flying Carpet Festival on the Turkish-Syrian border makes the impossible possible
Interview with Sahba Aminikia 06/01/2023
Verdigris Ensemble, Dallas’ innovative choir, bringing medieval Persian poetry to life
Verdigris Ensemble, Dallas’ innovative choir, is at it again.
Now in its sixth season, the choir has previously created and sold a choral NFT for $375,000 and given performances with themes ranging from the Big Bang to the Dust Bowl to the lives of Dallas residents. Its next project is a new kind of collaboration.
Love Unites Music, Poetry and Art in Verdigris Ensemble's ‘SHAMS'
What can a modern audience learn about love from a 13th-century mystic? Verdigris Ensemble answers that question with SHAMS, a performance art experience about the transformative power of love.
After three years of collaboration with the Crow Museum of Asian Art, San Francisco-based Iranian composer Sahba Aminikia and New York-based Syrian artist Kevork Mourad, Verdigris Ensemble will premiere SHAMS April 14-16 at the Moody Performance Hall in the Dallas Arts District. The work incorporates the choral ensemble’s 16 voices, a string quartet, prerecorded sounds, visual projections and staging.
Akron Symphony delights with “Global Circus”
Sometimes it can be easy to forget just how much classical music is loved worldwide. Thousands of miles away from the classical music strongholds in Europe and North America, musicians of all backgrounds compose and perform with passion — even at times in the face of difficult circumstances. But as Akron Symphony music director Christopher Wilkins reminded his audience on Saturday, this love is often unrequited, leaving works from places like the Middle East underrepresented on American stages.
“Being” (Boodan) Album Release by Mahoor Institute
We are excited to announce the release of “Being” (Boodan), our new album and a collaboration between San Francisco-based Iranian American composer Sahba Aminikia and Bay Area- based Persian vocalist Siavosh Behbahani “in Iran” by Mahoor Institute of Culture and Arts. “Being” is a collection of traditional Persian songs that reflect the ongoing social and political tension in Iran from the 19th century until today. The entire album is arranged for tenor vocalist in classical Persian style and piano quintet,
Interview on KALW Revolutions Per Minute
Last Sunday, January 15th, 2023, I had the honor of being on Revolutions Per Minute on KALW San Francisco, 91.7 FM, Sundays 6 to 8 pm with dear Sarah Cahill and we dedicated the program to women’s voices from Iran including the music of Haydeh, Googosh, Ghamar-ol-molook Vaziri , Pari Zangeneh, Mahsa Vahdat, Delkash, Evlin Baghtcheban, Afsaneh Rasai and Homa Niknam. You can listen to it here:
Darde Moshtarak(Shared Pain) Performed by Kronos Quartet and Shiraz Choir
In September 2022, the death of a 22-year-old woman, Mahsa Amini, in the custody of morality police sparked an ongoing series of protests against the state's gender apartheid. The Islamic republic's violent crackdown on the protestors has escalated this movement into a full-blown uprising across the country and around the globe. In Iran, protests have been happening daily for the past 2.5 months. 16,813 people have been arrested, and 402 have been gunned down by the security forces, 58 of whom were minors. The Iranian people's revolution asks for FREEDOM and EQUALITY for all.
Cultural Landscapes of Confinement with Sahba Aminikia and Aleksandra Vrebalov
Composers Sahba Aminikia and Aleksandra Vrebalov speak of their involvement with the Flying Carpet Children’s Festival, an annual arts festival, founded and directed by Aminikia, that takes place each summer along the Syrian-Turkish border.
Sahba Aminikia On Art Restart
Host Pier Carlo Talenti interviews artists who are shaking up the status quo to learn how they are reinventing their fields and building a new landscape for the arts.
Creative Dissonances: Sahba Aminikia @CCA
On Monday, November 15, 2021, Sahba Aminikia, an Iranian-American contemporary music composer, artistic director, performer, and educator discussed how his life-experiences of personal, cultural, and political conflicts are transformed into his work and how music in general helps us live through challenging times. The talk is part of a course “Dissonance - Music and Conflict,” one of the Upper Division Interdisciplinary Studio courses at California College of the Arts, which helps students incorporate our experiences of conflicts in our creative making practices learning from how music transcends borders and unites us regardless of the conflicts that exist.
Iranian American composer Sahba Aminikia on music as an 'organic response' to pain
When Iranian American composer Sahba Aminikia was 19, he left Iran for Russia to study at the St. Petersburg State Conservatory under Boris Ivanovich Tishchenko, a former student of the famous classical music composer Dmitri Shostakovich.
Aminikia says he admires Shostakovich so much that he was inspired to go into classical music.
Artists Wow Children In Turkey With Lively Shows
In its third edition, the Flying Carpet Festival drew smiles on the faces of children from impoverished communities in southeast Turkey. The festival is a visual and musical spectacle performed by artists from around the world.