Farangis Nurulla-Khoja

Farangis Nurulla-Khoja is a Tajik-Canadian composer born in Dushanbe (Tajikistan) in the family of well-known Tajik composer, Ziyodullo Shahidi. A musician, Farangis 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. Her compositions include symphonic, chamber, vocal and electroacoustic music. She has composed over 50 pieces, and her work has been performed in over 21 countries. Among many other awards and recognitions, Farangis received the grand prize of the Abu Gazali Foundation in Salzburg (Austria) for her orchestra piece Replica in 2000. The Canada Arts Council’s Joseph S. Stauffer Prize for the Arts was awarded to Farangis as outstanding mid-career composer of 2008. Her recent orchestra piece L’infini de l’instant won the Andrey Petrov Composers Competition (Saint Petersburg, Russia), 2016. Farangis has also been a composer in residence for many prestigious organizations such as the Royaumont Foundation (France), the Bellagio Center of the Rockefeller Foundation (Italy), and the Society of Swedish Composers in Cortona (Italy).