Daniel Reza SABZGHABAEI | MaCI - Université Grenoble Alpes

Daniel Reza SABZGHABAEI (دانیال رضا سبزقبایی)

is a composer & vocalist who is interested in looking at time through different lenses: unpacking notions of tradition, exploring memories of those past, and investigating nostalgic frameworks that lean forward. His music has been commissioned and presented by organizations including: the GRAMMY-winning New York Youth Symphony, JACK Quartet, National Sawdust, the International Contemporary Ensemble, Ensemble Proton Bern, loadbang, the Duisburg Philharmonic, the Civic Orchestra of Chicago, Intimacy of Creativity Festival, the American Composers Orchestra, TAK Ensemble, Beth Morrison Projects, the New York Festival of Song, bassist Robert Black, the Banff Centre, Contemporaneous, Guerilla Opera, the Moab Music Festival, Chorus Austin, the Young New Yorkers Chorus, Pro Coro Canada, The Esoterics, OPERA America, and VocalEssence among others. Daniel completed his doctorate at Cornell, where his dissertation focused on Persian Choral Music.

Project at the MaCI

⃞ △◯ - a monodrama in three shapes

December 2024 - November 2026

This project will be a musicotheatrical work, which investigates the intimately intertwined history of the veil and Iranian women, told through a series of interconnected vignettes. The work will explore poetry, prose, and posts from anonymous women in the prominent آزادی‌یواشکی# Āzādī Yevāshakī (#MyStealthyFreedom) movement of Iran, historical edicts from political officials, traditional poetry referencing head coverings, and field work on the ground in Iran, consisting of personal interviews with women participating in protest movements. Through this dual anthropological and musical research, I will be creating a theatrical & dramatic work that unpacks and investigates notions of the Iranian conception of protest in sound, art, politics, and culture, giving voice and space to the individual and collective experiences that Iranian women have navigated on the persistent journey to freedom of expression.

Though just a simple head covering, the hijab has held great weight in Iran for centuries: with a period of mandatory unveiling under Reza Shah (1936-1940)—the kashf-e hijab—to the current status of mandatory veiling enforced by the Basij, the various forms of the veil have remained at the forefront of Iranian political, social, and moral discourse. This new monodrama investigates the intimately intertwined history of the veil and the women of Iran, focusing on experiential extremes of public performance, united by the singing string players and solo vocalist: an exploration of identity, both joint and singular. The work explores this dense history in a series of interconnected vignettes, tracing the mandatory veiling and unveiling laws of Iran, the moral and cultural detritus accumulating from statutes & sociopolitical dogmas, and the toll that policing bodies and minds takes on a populous over centuries.

Outside of music and interdisciplinary projects, Daniel also translates Persian poetry.

Daniel will be affiliated to the laboratory LUHCIE and will be working closely with Elise Petit, director of UGA Musicology department. Her research focuses on the links between politics and music in twentieth-century in Germany. She is interested in the place of music under the Third Reich and in concentration camps.

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Funded by the French government's Programme d'Investissement Avenir and implemented by ANR France 2030