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:

https://blog.ted.com/meet-the-2024-class-of-ted-fellows/

As an Iranian American composer, I’ve always believed in the transformative power of art, especially when it’s made accessible to the most vulnerable. My journey with the Flying Carpet Festival has been driven by a desire to decentralize and decolonize the arts. I’ve seen firsthand how beauty, music, and creative expression can be life-changing, particularly for young people affected by trauma and displacement. In Turkey, the festival has become a bridge for Syrian refugee youth, offering them a stage to share their skills and passions, and helping to break down social and cultural barriers that often divide us.

The Flying Carpet Festival has brought Circus Heroes to the forefront, celebrating their dedication and talent as artists and integrating them into the local community. Watching these young artists perform and shine reminds me of the importance of our mission, and I feel grateful to play a part in creating spaces where art can heal and inspire unity. In a world often defined by division, I believe that creativity and connection are the keys to fostering understanding.

Becoming a TED Fellow means that this story, our story, will have the chance to reach new audiences worldwide. Through TED, I hope to amplify the festival’s impact and invite others to join us in exploring how art can be a powerful tool for social cohesion and healing. I’m looking forward to sharing more in my TED Talk, which will soon be published on TED.com, where I’ll delve into the journey of the Flying Carpet Festival and how we can continue creating spaces where beauty and hope thrive, even amidst adversity.

This recognition is a testament to the collective spirit of everyone involved in the festival, and I can’t wait to see where this new chapter leads. Thank you to TED for this incredible honor, and to each of you who believe in the power of art to change lives. The journey continues!

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. 

These events are part of a much longer history of Iranian women’s pursuit of equality, including fearless public protest over 150 years, and creative resistance to patriarchy in the private realm. This piece is a testament to the power of three generations of Iranian women, each holding different expectations, living through different times and historical changes. These are the grandmothers, mothers, and daughters of our own families, who raised us and inspired us with their powerful energy and love. 

Where past generations met defeat by placing hope in their daughters and trusting the future, today’s young women are saying firmly that change must come now, in our lifetimes. Like the Phoenix, or Qaqnus of Iranian mythology, who lays no egg but regenerates in a blazing fire, their future comes from their own transformation. They have shown us that the next major social and political revolution in Iran will indeed be led by women."

—Sahba Aminikia and Zara Houshmand

Verdigris Ensemble, Dallas’ innovative choir, bringing medieval Persian poetry to life

By Tim Diovanni - 5:00 AM on Apr 4, 2023 CDT

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.

In partnership with the Crow Museum of Asian Art, Verdigris is premiering a new choral work, Shams, by Iranian-born composer Sahba Aminikia. The work explores the relationship between the mystic 13th-century Persian poet Rumi and his spiritual guide Shams Tabrizi.

Aminikia focuses on the love between the two men in his setting of Rumi’s poetry.

“The question comes, is this some sort of homosexual love?” Aminikia says. “But in fact, what we are targeting here is an idealistic higher love that leads to transformation. I don’t think it’s bounded or limited by gender or anything.”

Tracing the development of love over time, he says, are the eight sections of the 50-minute work. “Every section is dedicated to one stage of love. And I genuinely just describe what I felt in every stage of love.”

Shams also includes a string quartet, with performers from the Dallas Symphony Orchestra, and prerecorded sounds. The recordings are from recent women’s rights protests in Iran as well as U.S. protests in 2017 against the executive order that banned travel from mainly Muslim countries.

“It represents this chaotic scene of the world today that is all about differences,” Aminikia says. “But the remedy and the medium that people can talk through that, which is the lens of love, in my opinion, is the key to Rumi’s poetry.”

Read the full article