Daniel Sabzghabaei

Overview

Daniel Sabzghabaei 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 presented by professional and amateur organizations alike, including: Hong Kong’s Intimacy of Creativity Festival, the New York Festival of Song, Minnesota’s VocalEssence, Dallas’ premier new music ensemble Voices of Change, the Busan Choral Festival, Korea’s Ansan City Choir, Pittsburgh-based OvreArts, and Ukraine’s Kharkov Academic Youth Orchestra to name a few. As of late, Daniel has been increasingly interested in his Persian heritage, seriously studying and taking inspiration from Persian melodic and rhythmic systems, Persian folk music, and Persian art and poetry.

Daniel is a serious and devoted collaborator in multidisciplinary works, recently working with playwright Dr. Andrew Harris on his new play The Lady Revealed which premiered April 2013, was given two workshop performances in Dallas at Theatre Three, was read in London at the Tristan Bates Theater by members of the Royal Shakespeare Company, and was given a workshop performance in NYC in March 2015 at the New Dramatists. This led to another collaboration with Harris, resulting in a new score for the beloved play Doubt: A Parable under the direction of Harris. Outside of the stage, Daniel has also scored video games, working with SMU’s  prestigious Guildhall program to collaborate with teams on new projects.

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. While at UNT, he was a member of the the UNT Grand Chorus who, along with the UNT Symphony Orchestra, premiered Jake Heggie’s work Ahab’s Symphony for choir and orchestra in 2013. 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, Kirsten Broberg, and Andrew May.

Research Focus