Farangis Nurulla-Khoja
Farangis Nurulla-Khoja (b. Sept 2nd, 1972) - A Tajik-Canadian composer, she holds a Doctorate of Fine Arts in Composition (University of Gothenburg, Sweden).
Farangis Nurulla-Khoja is the granddaughter of noted Tajik composer Ziyodullo Shahidi. She studied at the Ziyodullo Shahidi Music School in Dushanbe and entered the Tajik State Conservatory in 1991. The sudden dissolution of the Soviet Union, followed in Tajikistan by the civil war, interrupted her exploration of the current of native sounds, and brought her to the Pitt Rivers Museum of Oxford University, from where she moved to Sweden.
In 1995 she entered the Gothenburg School of Music to study with Ole Lutzow-Holm, obtained her MA in Composition in 1999, and her Diploma in 2003. Having also studied at the University of California in San Diego with Brian Ferneyhough and Roger Reynolds, as well as at IRCAM, she lives by the criteria of the international life and follows the aesthetic language of world music.
A musician, she works with the conviction that dance is the complement of music, and that language - particularly the language of poets - is above all a series of communicative sounds. For her, making music is a journey into the unknown, a search for sounds unheard and forms unseen.
Farangis Nurulla-Khoja's compositions have been performed in concerts in Dushanbe (Tajikistan), Helsinki (Finland), Gothenburg, Vaxjo and Stockholm (Sweden), Leipzig and Munich (Germany), Toulouse, Royaumont, and Paris (France), Osaka and Tokyo (Japan), Montreal (Canada), and San Diego (USA). She received the second prize of the Abu Gazali Foundation in Salzburg (Austria) for her piece "Replica" in 2000.
Her works have been performed by a diversity of ensembles and soloists, including ICTUS (Belgium), Avanti! (Finland), Atelier Vocal (France), Nytida Musik (Sweden), Gagego (Sweden), Pierre-Yves Artaud (France), Daniel Berg and the Symphony Orchestra of Musichögskolan, Symphony Orchestra of Gothenburg (Sweden), the Nouvel Ensemble Moderne (Canada), Neue Vocalsolisten Stuttgart (Germany), and Alexis Descharmes (France). In 2005 Farangis Nurulla-Khoja was a composer in residence at the Fondation Royaumont (France) where she was working on the project Maqam et Créations.