Daniel Reza Sabzghabaei (دانیال رضا سبزقبایی) (ASCAP) is a composer and vocalist whose work aims to emphasize the malleability of time and how we experience it, not just in the concert hall but in everyday life as well. His music has been performed and commissioned by organizations including: Hong Kong’s Intimacy of Creativity Festival, the International Contemporary Ensemble, Beth Morrison Projects, the New York Festival of Song, Israeli Chamber Project, [Switch~ Ensemble], Pro Coro Canada, TAK Ensemble, Contemporaneous, Utah’s Moab Music Festival, Minnesota’s VocalEssence, Dallas’ Voices of Change, Seattle’s The Esoterics, the Busan Choral Festival, Korea’s Ansan City Choir, Romania’s ICon Arts Festival, Festivalul Internațional Craiova Muzicală, and Ukraine’s Kharkov Youth Orchestra Slobozhanskiy to name a few. As of late, Daniel has been studying and taking increasing inspiration from Persian melodic and rhythmic systems, folk music, art, and poetry.
As a performer, Daniel has been singing since he was a young boy and regularly performs as a choral and solo vocalist, working in various churches across DFW and recently Baltimore. Daniel is also a new music advocate, having premiered multiple new works by students and professional composers while at UNT, including the North American premier of Czech composer Ivo Medek’s opera The Cage Affair, in which he played the role of John Cage. Daniel made his international debut at the 2017 Intimacy of Creativity festival, performing selections from his cycle Four Glimpses of Desire.
Daniel graduated summa cum laude with a BM in Composition as a Distinguished Honors Scholar from the University of North Texas in 2014. He then earned his MM in 2017 from The Peabody Conservatory of The Johns Hopkins University, whereupon graduation, he was given the P. Bruce Blair Award in Composition by the faculty. His teachers have included: Kevin Puts, Panayiotis Kokoras, Joseph Klein, William Coble, and Andrew May.
Daniel is currently a doctoral student and Sage Fellow at Cornell University, studying with Kevin Ernste, Marianthi Papalexandri-Alexandri, and Roberto Sierra.