School of Humanities and Sciences


Showing 11-20 of 33 Results

  • Kimia Koochakzadeh-Yazdi

    Kimia Koochakzadeh-Yazdi

    Doctor of Musical Arts Student, Musical Arts

    BioKimia Koochakzadeh-Yazdi (b. 1997 Tehran, Iran) composes for acoustic and hybrid ensembles, and produces and performs electronic music. Kimia explores the unfamiliar familiar while constantly being driven by the mechanism of the human psyche and exploring ways to manipulate it.

    Her work has been featured in festivals such as The New York City Electroacoustic Music Festival (Virtual), Yarn/Wire Institute (Virtual), Ensemble Evolution (Virtual), New Music on the Point (Vermont, USA), wasteLAnd Summer Academy 2019 (Los Angeles, USA), EQ: Evolution of the String Quartet (Banff, Canada), Modulus Festival (Vancouver, Canada), SALT New Music Festival (Victoria, Canada).

    Being a cross-disciplinary artist, she has actively collaborated on projects evolving around dance, film, and theatre. Kimia has been presented by organizations such as Iranian Female Composer Association, Music on Main, Western Front, Vancouver New Music, and Media Arts Committee. She has had publicity in papers such as The New York Times, Georgia Straight, MusicWorks Magazine, Vancouver Sun, and Sequenza 21.

    She desires to play with the human psyche and its perception of time and space while creating sonic worlds that have their own rules and justifications.“Accidents” in music are the basis of her work.

  • Mercedes Montemayor Elosua

    Mercedes Montemayor Elosua

    Doctor of Musical Arts Student, Musical Arts

    BioMercedes Montemayor (b. Monterrey, Mexico) is a composer creating innovative and avant-garde music. Her passion for music began at an early age, and since then, she has been immersed in the world of composition and music production. Her musical influences are diverse, and she enjoys experimenting with different genres, from classical music to ambient and electronic music. One of her greatest influences is Ryuichi Sakamoto, whose compositions have been a constant source of inspiration for Mercedes.

    Despite her short career, Mercedes Montemayor has managed to stand out in the world of experimental music thanks to her ability to create complex and immersive soundscapes. Her compositions are often introspective and emotive, reflecting her interest in exploring new forms of expression through music. In addition to her work as a composer, Mercedes is also a sound engineer, which has allowed her to have a more technical and precise approach to her music production.

    Mercedes performed in Mutek Mexico in October 2023 and interned in WSDG, an architectural acoustics firm.

  • Ashkan Nazari

    Ashkan Nazari

    Ph.D. Student in Music, admitted Autumn 2023
    Iranian Studies - Iran Media Projects, Iranian Studies

    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.