Stanford University
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Ashkan Nazari
Ph.D. Student in Music, admitted Autumn 2023
BioAshkan Nazari
Degrees / Education
M.A., Ethnomusicology, Tehran University of Art, Tehran, 2016
B.A., Music, University of Tehran, Tehran, 2012
A Kurdish-Iranian musician, multi-instrumentalist, improviser, composer, and researcher, Ashkan is currently a PhD candidate in ethnomusicology and a doctoral certificate student in composition at Stanford University. Ashkan’s compositional work draws on the Iranian dastgāh system and Kurdish maqām idioms, while his practice at Stanford engages contemporary and experimental compositional approaches.
Ashkan’s more than 15-year research career has centered on Kurdish classical and folk musics as well as Iranian classical music. At Stanford, his work explores intersections between music and genocide, war, violence, intellectual movements, Islam, and Kurdish identity. He is also interested in developing decolonial ethnographic approaches to maqām as a cultural–musical practice and concept, particularly in relation to ethnicity and racism.
In his quest to explore those realms, Ashkan has already been prolific back home, with two titles: The Concept and Structure of Maqām in Kurdish Music, The Structure of Musical Modes in Hawrāmi Music. His articles have appeared in leading Iranian journals, and he has presented his research at international ethnomusicology conferences.
As the founder and conductor of the first philharmonic orchestra in his Kurdish hometown of Paveh, Ashkan has also taught Iranian music theory and directed Iranian ensembles, and has instructed setār performance and the analysis of Iranian classical music at the University of Kurdistan and the University of Art and Culture in Kermanshah and Sanandaj, respectively.
