New Residency by Aftab Darvishi and Rouzbeh Esfandarmaz

Iranian music artists Aftab Darvishi and Rouzbeh Esfandarmaz are starting their new artistic music residency called “Loss & Absence” at studio LOOS!

In this project, Aftab and Rouzbeh are joining forces to create something that is slightly not in the comfort zone of both artists. In other words, it is going to be challenging in different ways for both of them.

The outcome of this project will be a series of compositions (they plan on working on the first one during this residency at LOOS) that will be played by both artists, performed with acoustic and electronic instruments.

Aftab Darvishi

Aftab has studied Music Performance at the University of Tehran, Composition at the Royal Conservatory of The Hague, and Composing for film-and at the same time- Karnatic Music (South Indian music) at the Conservatory of Amsterdam.

Aftab has presented her music in various festivals in Europe, USA, and Asia.She is a former member of KhZ ensemble; an experimental electronic ensemble with the supervision of Yannis Kyriakides that has performed in various festivals such as Holland festival.

In October 2016, she was awarded the Prestigious” Tenso Young Composers Award 2016. In 2017, Aftab was commissioned by San Francisco’s Grammy Award-winning Kronos Quartet to write a piece for Fifty for the Future: The Kronos Learning Repertoire. She continued her collaboration with Kronos, with creating a new piece for Music for change- The Banned countries. Since 2015, She has been regularly invited as a guest lecturer to the University of Tehran.

In February 2019, Aftab Premiered her Opera “Turan Dokht” in Holland festival 2019.

Rouzbeh Esfandarmaz

A music lover and sound addict who has every intention to spend his life seeking and refining new ways to make sound and music. Esfandarmaz is a hard-working musician with extensive experience as a teacher, tutor, composer, arranger, band-leader, multi-instrumentalist, music producer, audio engineer, and 3D Audio learner. He believes strongly in group efforts, which has led him to establish one of the successful bands in Iran (Pallett Band). Additionally, he works with an experimental spirit and an urge to make and produce music and sound, based on Iran’s rich folk, ritualistic, and regional musical heritage, and perform for audiences, live or through headphones and speakers, all around the world. This urge let him to form a new music band (Esfand); an electronic music duo focused on new ways of showcasing Iranian folk music to the world.