Iranian-Born Composer Sahba Aminikia Bridges Worlds in Extreme Times

As a western-trained classical musician who grew up in a musical household filled with traditional Persian music, I have a special place in my heart for any artist who draws upon their own heritage while creating a relevant voice in our increasingly complex and plural world. Iranian-born composer Sahba Aminikia is just that kind of artist.

In the middle of rehearsals for the 10 works that Aminikia composed, arranged and presented at last month's annual Kronos Festival, airports across the country were rocked by chaos and protests in response to President Trump's travel ban against refugees and visa- and green card-holders from seven Muslim-majority countries -- including Aminikia's own home country of Iran.  Aminikia, a refugee himself, came to the United States in 2006 to study music, a pursuit inconceivable in Iran given his Baha’i faith. (One of Iran’s religious minority groups, the Baha’i face serious discrimination and are deprived of basic human rights, including the right to education.)

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SAHBA AMINIKIA COMPOSES FOR THESE TIMES

JILL L. FERGUSON

Sahba Aminikia was called by the San Francisco Chronicle “an artist singularly equipped to provide a soundtrack to these unsettling times". Aminikia lives in the United States, but his family is from Iran. Early this month, his work was part of a festival by the world-famous Kronos Quartet, for whom Aminikia is writer-in-residence. His mother, a U.S. green card holder who is in Tehran, was caught in the travel ban issued by President Trump, so she missed the early February festival at SFJazz that included her son’s music.

Aminikia’s compositions are haunting and ethereal and combine elements from both eastern and western musical traditions to create sounds that are as exotic as they are familiar.

Welum caught up with the 35- year-old composer to ask about his music and how beauty and ethics are taken into account in his artistic creations and in his life.

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Finding the beauty inside the appaling

By Andrew Gilbert Jan. 31, 2017 Updated: Jan. 31, 2017 2:46 p.m.

Originally assembled to perform George Crumb’s caustic antiwar opus “Black Angels” in 1973, Kronos Quartet has spent some four decades on the cutting edge of new music, forging a vast international network of collaborators. But the San Francisco string quartet’s global vision has rarely seemed as timely and urgent as the Kronos Festival 2017: Here and Now, which runs at the SFJazz Center from Thursday, Feb. 2, to Saturday, Feb. 4.

The event’s composer in residence, Sahba Aminikia, has spent the last week contending with the fallout of President Donald Trump’s executive order banning citizens from seven countries, including his native Iran, from entering the United States. His mother, a U.S. green-card holder who lives in Tehran, was planning to attend the festival, but has canceled the trip because of the new policy.

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