Am 26. Jänner 2023 durfte ich Nilufar Habibian und Igor Maia bei UNIsounds zu einem Interview begrüßen. Beide Komponist*innen gaben hierbei Einblicke in ihre musikalische Laufbahn und der Einfluss verschiedener Stile aus unterschiedlichen Ländern.
Nilufar Habibian is a composer of acoustic and electronic music, an award-winning qanun-player and an improviser based in London. Alongside concert music, her interdisciplinary collaborations have included scores for contemporary dance and film.
She has received her diploma in music from Tehran Music Conservatoire and studied Persian classical music in Iran under the supervision of the most prominent Iranian Maestros. She has received her bachelor in music from the Royal Holloway University of London and her master in composition from Guildhall School of Music and Drama. Currently, she is studying her master’s in composition with Carola Bauckholt at ABPU in Linz. As a composer, she tries to investigate and express human conditions through sound and explore new sounds that carry and convey multiple meanings, emotions and characters. Her pieces have performed at different venues such as The Place, Wigmore Hall and Milton Court in the UK and Kennedy Center Millennium Stage (Washington DC), Roulette Hall (New York) in the US, Palais Wittgenstein (Düsseldorf) in Germany and Brucknerhaus (Linz) in Austria.
As a qanun player, Nilufar performs a variety of musical styles ranging from Persian classical and Middle-Eastern music to avant-garde and experimental contemporary Western music. In her solo performances, she tries to offer new interpretations of the Persian classical repertoire approaching it from a new and modern (technically and aesthetically) viewpoint. She has performed at venues and concert halls such as Vahdat Hall, Rudaki Hall, Milad Hall in Iran and Purcell Room, Cadogan Hall and Cafe OTO, Swan Theatre (Royal Shakespeare Theatre) and London Coliseum in the UK and Brucknerhaus in Austria.
Some other collaborations include a storytelling project with City University and Tiny Owl publisher called “The phoenix of Persia”, for which she made incidental music. She also composed an electronic track for “These Are Our Friends Too”, an album that highlights the work the charity FORWARD does towards ending female genital mutilation. In March 2021, her recent electronic piece was released in a compilation Album by Iranian label Noise A Noise.
Igor Maia is a Brazilian composer and conductor, currently an Assistant Professor of Composition at the Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG-Brazil). He holds a PhD from King’s College London, where he was supervised by Silvina Milstein and George Benjamin, with the support of the Capes Foundation of the Brazilian Ministry of Education. His PhD research was on Brazilian indigenous culture and its integration with compositional techniques of contemporary classical music. Previous research has been on timbre and orchestration in the music of Schoenberg, Scelsi and Xenakis.
Igor’s compositions have been performed throughout Europe, the Americas and Japan and he has participated in courses with composers such as Isabel Mundry, Brian Ferneyhough, Toshio Hosokawa, Jukka Tiensuu, Francesco Filidei, Martin Matalon, Oscar Bianchi, among others. He has received many awards including the 2nd Prize of the Pablo Casals Composition Competition (France), BMI Student Composer Award (USA), National Foundation of the Arts (FUNARTE) Prize in Composition in 2016 and 2010 (Brazil) and 1st Prize of II National Composition Competition Música Hoje (Brazil).
As a conductor, he has performed in Brazil, Germany, Holland, Spain and the UK and has been Assistant Conductor of the King’s College London Symphony Orchestra (KCLSO) and Associate Conductor of the Goodensemble, Goodenough College (London). Igor’s compositions are published by Babel Scores (France) http://www.babelscores.com/IgorMaia and Donemus (Holland). Thanks to the Ernst Mach Grant from OeAD he had a one-month residency at ABPU under supervision of Carola Bauckholt.
