Please join us for this special event - part of the 

Socially Conscious Artistry -2024/2025 Faculty Leadership Series, presented by The College of Performing Arts - Mannes, Jazz, Drama at The New School.

This event will be Livestreamed (the viewing link will be posted here the day of the event).

For millennia, Afghanistan has been a crossroad between many different ethnic groups and as a result was an incubator and repository for numerous musical traditions all of which are once again in danger since the Taliban has returned to power there. Vocalist Dr. Waheedullah Saghar, a master of Afghan and Hindustani music who has performed all over the world, was the head of the Music Department at Kabul University until the Taliban reclaimed control of Afghanistan and will be in residence at The New School during the 2024-25 academic year as part of the New School's University in Exile for Afghan Artists, a consortium in collaboration with the Artistic Freedom Initiative. Dr. Saghar will discuss Afghanistan's now fragile musical heritage and his own extraordinary personal musical journey in the face of adversity with composer and music journalist Frank J. Oteri, Assistant Professor of Musicology at The New School.

Dr. Waheedullah Saghar is the former head of Music Department, Faculty of Fine Arts, Kabul University. Having trained extensively in Afghanistan and India in Hindustani music, he cross-applied his technical expertise to revive studies in Klassiki (Afghan Classical Music) at Kabul University. He has performed at numerous festivals incuding at the Melody from East Festival, Samarkand (Uzbekistan) 2019, Stockholm (Sweden) 2017, Tampere (Finland) 2017, KM Music Academy and Goethe Institute, Chennai (India) 2017, IKSVV (India) 2015, Lucknow (India) 2012, Hildesheim (Germany) 2009. He is now based in Weimar, Germany.

Frank J. Oteri is a composer, musicologist, journalist, and educator based in New York City. His musical compositions, which combine emotional directness with an obsession for formal processes, include the pandemic-inspired Already Yesterday or Still Tomorrow, premiered by the South Dakota Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Delta David Gier who subsequently led a performance of the work by the Orchestra Sinfonica Metropolitana di Bari in Italy, both in 2021, and the performance oratorio MACHUNAS, inspired by the life of Fluxus-founder George Maciunas, which was created in collaboration with Lucio Pozzi and staged at the Contemporary Arts Centre in Vilnius, Lithuania, as part of the Christopher Summer Festival in 2005. Among Oteri's other works are: Fair and Balanced?, a quartertone saxophone quartet premiered and recorded by the PRISM Quartet; Imagined Overtures, for a rock band in 36-tone equal temperament recorded by the Los Angeles Electric 8; the ASCAP Foundation Charles Kingsford Fund commissioned song cycle Versions of the Truth for dual-voiced singer and piano premiered by the Cheah Chan Duo; and the 13-limit just intonation clarinet solo Spurl which was awarded UnTwelve's 2018 Micro-Cosmos (Mikrokosmos) Microtonal Pedagogy Award. In addition to his composing activities, Oteri is the Vice President of the International Society for Contemporary Music (ISCM) and the Editor in Chief of its World New Music Magazine. From 1999 to 2023, Oteri was the Editor of NewMusicBox, which was created at the American Music Center and continued at New Music USA. In demand as a freelance journalist and annotator, Oteri has written for BBC Music, Chamber Music, and Symphony magazines as well as numerous other publications and is a frequent pre-concert speaker and conference panel moderator. A graduate of New York City's LaGuardia High School of Music and the Arts (subject of the motion picture Fame in which he has a cameo) and Columbia University (where he ran WKCR's classical music and world music departments), Oteri is a committed educator who has taught in New York City public high schools and is a member of the Residency Faculty for the Vermont College of Fine Arts Graduate Program in Music Composition. Oteri received the 2007 Victor Herbert Award from the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers (ASCAP), the 2018 Composers Now Visionary Award, and the 2021 ASCAP Foundation Deems Taylor/Virgil Thomson Broadcast/Media Award. Learn more at his website: www.fjoteri.com.