Shiva Feshareki

The experimental composer Shiva Feshareki crosses boundaries among orchestral music, electronics, acoustic manipulation, and DJ arts. Her work has followers in both the world of contemporary classical music and electronic dance music. Feshareki was born in London in 1987. She is of Iranian background. Feshareki's music attracted attention early on as she won the BBC Young Composer Award in 2004. In 2007, her work dancefloor distortions for chamber orchestra and bass guitar was performed by the London Philharmonic Orchestra at Queen Elizabeth Hall. The following year saw Feshareki's first work to feature the use of turntables; critical distortions was premiered by Feshareki and Natalie Clein at the Bath International Music Festival. Feshareki's sonic palette continued to expand with 2009's TTKonzert for four turntables, Kaoss Pad (an audio effects unit), saxophone quartet, and large orchestra, and with such works as 2015's The Calling, for soprano, prepared turntables, amplified cello, and an assortment of other instruments, with a text by folk singer-songwriter Laura Marling. In 2012, Feshareki's Valentine's Rhapsody was included on the London Sinfonietta's New Music Show album. Feshareki earned a doctoral degree from the Royal College of Music in 2017, and that year, she also won the Ivor Novello Award for Innovation. Feshareki went on to become a visiting fellow at Oxford University's Electronic Music Practice Research Group. Feshareki's own website notes that "[d]escribing Shiva's music is far from straightforward, when the breadth of expression, and range of compositions encompasses everything from orchestral, solo, choral, chamber, electronic and interdisciplinary installation works." She draws on a large variety of sound sources and integrates them with many existing music styles and many kinds of source material, from electronic dance music to thrash metal. Especially notable is the way her music takes up the work of early electronic music pioneers Éliane Rodrigues, Daphne Oram, and Pauline Oliveros. In performance, Feshareki uses a large collection of music technology ranging from turntables to analog tape, CDJs (CD players adapted to the needs of DJs, and "ambisonic" technology that generates a 360-degree musical experience. Her orchestration methods for conventional instruments also often strive to use them in "spatialized" three-dimensional forms. Feshareki has appeared with major orchestras, including the BBC Concert Orchestra, Aarhus Symphony Orchestra, and Düsseldorfer Symphoniker. Many of her appearances take place at festivals and museums, including The Tanks at Tate Modern, the Moscow Museum of Modern Art, and the Hyperreality Festival of Club Culture (Vienna). In 2022, Feshareki released her solo debut album, Turning World, on the NMC label; the album featured her work Still Point, which reworked an early electronic composition by Oram.
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