Nina Barzegar is an Iranian composer, pianist/improviser, educator, and actress whose creative practice spans concert music, film scoring, transcultural performance, and music pedagogy. She began her musical journey through Western classical piano, a tradition that deeply shaped her early works. Over time, her engagement with her homeland’s heritage evolved from an academic pursuit into an artistic sanctuary and vital medium of cultural continuity. Her compositional voice bridges Western contemporary practices with the modal systems, microtonality, ornamentation, intonations, and aesthetic depth of Iranian classical music, classical Persian poetry and art. In her scores, aesthetic principles of traditional music are translated into the idiomatic language of contemporary instrumentation, creating an active dialogue between distinct sonic traditions. Recently, her ongoing commitment to cross-cultural synthesis has expanded through the study of Korean music and collaborative projects with Korean and traditional Iranian instrumentalists.

Her concert works have been presented at major festivals and venues worldwide, including the Ojai Music Festival, Cutting Edge Concerts New Music Festival, and the Santa Cruz New Music Festival. She has collaborated with leading performers and ensembles such as the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE), Yarn/Wire, Del Sol Quartet, and Steven Schick. In 2022, her premiere of Inexorable Passage received critical acclaim in The New York Times, praised as “thrilling in its fusion of experimental, extended-technique effects, as well as melodic and chordal inventions.” A member of the Iranian Female Composers Association (IFCA), Barzegar has also scored several short and feature films and worked as an actress, with projects featured at the Uppsala International Short Film Festival, Film Festival Max Ophüls Preis, Split International Film Festival, and Sulmona International Film Festival.

Barzegar is D.M.A. candidate in music composition from the University of California, Santa Cruz, where she completed her doctoral dissertation under the supervision of Ben Leeds Carson. She is a recipient of the 2023 California Arts Council Individual Artist Fellowship and a full-year University of California Dissertation Completion Fellowship. She earned her bachelor’s degree in classical piano and master’s degree in composition from the University of Tehran, studying with Gagik Babayan, Dilbar Hakimova, Azin Movahed, Alireza Mashayekhi, Kiawasch Sahebnassagh, Sara Abazari, and Nader Mashayekhi. An experienced educator, Barzegar has authored a two-volume piano method, is developing a methodology for beginner composers, and designs composition curricula that approach music theory and creative practice as living, expressive tools for cross-cultural connection.