School of Humanities and Sciences
Showing 1-30 of 30 Results
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Chris East
Ph.D. Student in Music, admitted Autumn 2024
BioChris East is a PhD student in musicology at Stanford University. He studies early twentieth-century Russian ballet music, with a particular focus on the music of Igor Stravinsky.
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Mohammad H. Javaheri
Doctor of Musical Arts Student, Musical Arts
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsCoexistence of Animate and Inanimate Within a Shared Sound Space
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Zach Haines
Ph.D. Student in Music, admitted Autumn 2022
Renaissance Music Project Assistant, MusicBioZachary Haines is a PhD student in Musicology at Stanford University. He is both an active scholar and performer as a baritone, with research interests in the vocal repertoires of the late Renaissance and early Baroque.
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Kimia Koochakzadeh-Yazdi
Doctor of Musical Arts Student, Musical Arts
CCRMA Student Assistant, MusicBioKimia Koochakzadeh-Yazdi is an Iranian composer and performer. She writes for hybrid instrumental/electronic ensembles, creates electroacoustic and audiovisual works, builds instruments, and performs electronic music. She explores the unfamiliar familiar while being motivated by how melodies unfold through time; finding ways to play with various musical thresholds and exploring musical extremes is something that she is currently attracted to. Her work experiments with merging Iranian music with the more contemporary classical music aesthetics.
Being a cross-disciplinary artist, she has actively collaborated on projects evolving around dance, film, and theater. She is the co-founder and producer of Fashion x Electronics, a collective focused on creating interdisciplinary works based on fashion and electronic music.
Kimia’s work has been showcased by organizations across the globe and her work has been performed internationally at festivals including Ars Electronica, Festival Ecos Urbanos, Tehran Contemporary Sounds, Sonic Matter Festival, New York City Electroacoustic Music Festival, Sound and Music Conference, and Modulus Festival, among others.
She holds a BFA in Music Composition from Simon Fraser University’s Interdisciplinary School for the Contemporary Arts. Kimia is currently based in San Francisco and is a doctorate candidate in Music Composition at Stanford University. -
Mercedes Montemayor Elosua
Doctor of Musical Arts Student, Musical Arts
BioMercedes Montemayor is a Mexican composer, multidisciplinary artist, and doctor of musical arts candidate at Stanford University. Her works manifest as electronic and electroacoustic music, sound Art, sound installation, and performance Art. She composes multichannel pieces for the stage and the listening room at the Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics (CCRMA), from 3-7th order ambisonics. Also a film lover, she actively participates in the sound design and compositions of short films— and is now entering the world of scoring the feature film with LOUWRIEN WIJERS: from Competition to Compassion (2025). Her career launched with her collaboration with Mexican textile artist Miriam Medrez, in her intermedia installation Jardín Onírico (2022), followed by an internship at an Architectural Acoustics firm, and a performance in Mutek (2023) in Museo Anahuacall, in Mexico City with her debut album Volumina (2023).She studied Audio Engineering at Tecnológico De Monterrey and is in love with the process of mixing and mastering her work. Recently she's been reading Kierkegaard which is a considerable influence in her upcoming works, and continues to experiment with space to voice her experience as an experiencer.
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Ashkan Nazari
Ph.D. Student in Music, admitted Autumn 2023
BioAshkan Nazari
M.A. Ethnomusicology, Tehran University of Art, Tehran
B.A., Music, University of Tehran, Tehran
A Kurdish-Iranian musician and researcher, Ashkan is currently an ethnomusicology PhD student at Stanford. He holds a bachelor's degree in music from the University of Tehran and a master's in ethnomusicology from Tehran University of Art.
Ashkan's more than 15-year-long research career has centred upon Kurdish classical and folk musics as well as Iranian classical music. The core area he is pursuing at Stanford covers the intersections between music, on the one hand, and genocide, war, violence, intellectual movements, Islam and Kurdish identity, on the other. His interest also includes the development of ethnographic studies of the relationship existing between maqām as a cultural-musical concept, with ethnicity, racism and colonialism.
In his quest to explore those realms, Ashkan has already been prolific back home, with three titles: The Concept and Structure of Maqām in Kurdish Music, The Structure of Musical Modes in Hawrāmi Music, the Anthropological Aspects of Maqām Music of Iraqi Kurdistan, with the latter set to be released soon. Many of his numerous articles have additionally appeared across prestigious Iranian journals, others presented at international ethnomusicology conferences.
As the founder and conductor of the first-ever philharmonic orchestra in his Kurdish hometown of Paveh, Ashkan also taught Iranian music theory and Iranian ensembles, while instructing setār performance and analysis of Iranian classical music at the University of Kurdistan and the University of Art and Culture in Kermanshah and Sanandaj, respectively. -
Nancy Rico-Mineros
Master of Arts Student in Music, admitted Autumn 2024
CCRMA Student Assistant, Music
Templeton Project Assistant, MusicBioNancy Rico-Mineros is a second-year graduate student at the Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics (CCRMA). Prior to Stanford, Nancy received a Bachelor of Music from New York University where she majored in Music Technology.
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Calvin Van Zytveld
Ph.D. Student in Music, admitted Autumn 2023
BioCalvin Van Zytveld is pursuing a Ph.D. in Musicology at Stanford University. His research interests include hymnody of pre-industrial America and agricultural practices of the early modern period.
Calvin graduated summa cum laude in music from Princeton University, with a certificate in cello performance. Following graduation, he began master’s degrees in music composition and cello performance at the University of Michigan, but lost his vision suddenly in the second year of his studies due to Leber’s Hereditary Optic Neuropathy (LHON). Unable to read music, Calvin performs and writes music less frequently now, though he can be heard performing with the Plymouth Chamber Players, a grassroots chamber collective he co-directs with violinists Paolo Dara and Karisa Chiu in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Calvin enjoys organic vegetable gardening, drinking tea, and walking with his guide dog, Wake.
