Daniel Sabzghabaei is an internationally performed and award-winning composer whose works have been presented by professional and amateur ensembles alike, including: Dallas’ premier new music ensemble Voices of Change, the Kharkov Academic Youth Orchestra, the Ansan City Choir, Pittsburgh-based OvreArts, and the ICon Arts Percussion Group, to name a few. Daniel’s 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. As of late, Daniel has been increasingly interested in his Persian heritage, seriously studying Persian art, music, and poetry. Daniel was born in Denton, Texas where he graduated summa cum laude from The University of North Texas as a Distinguished Honors Scholar. Daniel is currently a graduate student at The Peabody Conservatory of The Johns Hopkins University studying with Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Kevin Puts. Recent and upcoming engagements include: the premier of Delbaré by Minnesota-based choral ensemble Magpies and Ravens, an internship at the 2016 Ojai Summer Music Festival, performances at the Oregon Bach Festival Composers Symposium with James MacMillan, and a Composer-In-Residence position at the ICon Arts Academy in Sibiu, Romania.

Four Glimpses of Desire

With traditional texts in Farsi, this set of four Persian songs reflects on love, desire, and longing, with The Belovéd at the center of it all. This Sufi ideal of the close and extremely intimate relationship between The Lover and The Belovéd is displayed directly in these four songs. There is a constant longing for oneness and unification with The Belovéd which The Lover has been separated from, a concept and core ideal of Islam that is especially important in Sufism. The longing for intimate closeness with that which seems unobtainable is essential in these four texts, and a wealth of Sufi poetry. This desire is all encompassing: passionate, physical, spiritual, sexual, emotional, and mystical. An excerpt from ancient Sufi poet and mystic Farid ud Din Attar exemplifies this belief:
In Love no longer ‘thou’ and ‘I’ exist,
For Self has passed away in the Beloved.