Niloufar Nourbakhsh

Described as “stark” by WNPR, and “darkly lyrical” by the New York Times, winner of 2nd Hildegard competition, recipient of 2019 Female Discovery Grant from Opera America, and a finalist for Beth Morrison Projects Next Generation Competition, Iranian-American composer Niloufar Nourbakhsh’s music has been commissioned and performed by Nashville Symphony Orchestra, Library of Congress, I-Park Foundation, National Sawdust Ensemble, International Contemporary Ensemble, Center for Contemporary Opera, Women Composers Festival of Hartford, PUBLIQuartet, Forward Music Project, Calidore String Quartet, Cassatt String Quartet, Akropolis Reed Quintet, Great Lakes Chamber Music Festival, and Ensemble Connect at numerous festivals and venues including Carnegie Hall, Washington Kennedy Center, Mostly Mozart Festival, Seal Bay Festival of American Chamber Music, and many more. A founding member and co-director of Iranian Female Composers Association, Nilou is a strong advocate of music education. In 2014, she worked as the site coordinator of Brooklyn Middle School Jazz Academy sponsored by Jazz at Lincoln Center. She is currently an adjunct faculty at Molloy College, a co-director of Peabody Conservatory Laptop Orchestra, and she regularly performs with her ensemble, Decipher.

Nilou is a music graduate and a Global Citizen Scholarship recipient of Goucher College as well as a Mahoney and Caplan Scholar from University of Oxford. Among her teachers are Lisa Weiss, Laura Kaminsky, Daniel Weymouth, Matthew Barnson, Margaret Schedel and Daria Semegen. She received a Ph.D. in music composition from Stony Brook University under the supervision of Sheila Silver.