Soosan Lolavar

Dr SOOSAN LOLAVAR is a British Iranian composer whose music draws on ideas from western and Iranian traditions. Despite these influences, her music moves far beyond metaphors of ‘fusion’ or assumptions of a binary opposition between east and west. Instead, she aims for a deeper, lifelong conversation between these musical traditions wherein her lifetime of personal experience, creative work and academic writing intertwine to produce something uniquely diasporic. In essence she aims to create work which speaks to the experience of living in the in-between. She often devises unique tuning systems for her work with the help of the infinite capabilities of the santoor. In 2023 she was selected to represent the British delegation at the ISCM World Music Days Festival in South Africa, released an album of solo violin music on all that dust and published a book with Routledge exploring arts-practice as a means for theorising diaspora.