Farnaz Modarresifar

Composer, santurist and poet Farnaz Modarresifar (1989, Iran) grew up surrounded by Western classical and traditional Persian music. She trained at the National Conservatoire and the University of Teheran, before pursuing her studies in composition, improvisation, and musicology in France. The recipient of awards from the Académie de l’Orchestre de Chambre de Paris and Georges Aperghis’s workshop, she won the Grand Prix Lycéen des Compositeurs in 2023 and the 2024 Prix Claude Arrieu from SACEM.

Her residency project, “Farnaz Modarresifar”, will take the form of a new orchestral and choral composition, in dialogue with Igor Stravinsky’s opera Oedipus Rex. The influence of this major work will be decisive in developing a creation in which music and poetry are interwoven. In drawing inspiration from the Oedipus myth, she does not confine herself to a reinterpretation but explores the themes of fate and tragedy through a resolutely contemporary approach. Her personal journey — marked by exile, religious oppression, and an unceasing quest for artistic freedom — finds a profound echo in this timeless story.