Roxanna Albayati is an interdisciplinary artist, researcher and music educator. Her practice centres around combining experimental music with performance art and audio-visuals, where her music merges cross-cultural improvisation with Iranian Dastgāh and the physicality of performance. Through an embodied research and artistic practice, Roxanna explores the conscious/subconscious and self/other, interrogating their interplay internally and materially, whilst considering this through the perspective of Orientalist constructions and female place in society, fascinated by the process and natural evolution of discovery.

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In 2024 she presented her multimedia project Shekare Azadi/Chasing Freedom as a re-comission from Zaratan Arte Contemporânea (Lisbon) for their performance cycle “VOLTAS”. Her book chapter ‘Unmuting the ‘other’: constructions and constrictions within an Iranian Dastgah and Western Art Music discourse’ is also set to be published by Routledge this year. 

 

Roxanna curates and directs the monthly concert series Displaced (Reference Point, London, where traditional & experimental sounds meet in spontaneity, unifying to create a space for their displaced sounds - a space for artists & audiences to share, feel, rage and heal together. She has performed and worked extensively at venues including at Cafe Oto (London, 2023), Northen Ballet (Leeds, 2023), CRL- Central Elétrica (Porto, 2024),  Espaço MIRA (Porto, 2024),  Bozar (Brussels, 2022), METRIC IP (Tallinn, 2020), Sound Festival (Sound Scotland, 2021) and Abastan Factory (Armenia, 2023). Roxanna's work has been supported by Help Musicians, Criatório Porto, Halaqat - Goethe Institute, Arts & Humanities Research Council, & i-Portunus. 

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She completed her BMus in Music at Goldsmiths, University of London, studying cello with Rebecca Turner. In 2020 she completed her MA in Performance and Music Education at Trinity Laban, achieving a distinction as well as the Directors Prize in Music Education, for outstanding work and contributions to the music education department and wider institution. She studied cello performance with Natalia Pavlutskaya, music education with Tim Palmer, improvisation with Douglas Finch and singing with Linda Hirst. 

​Roxanna is currently working at Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance as a graduate researcher and improvisation coach, looking into the inequalities which exist between different student groups in a conservatoire setting. The work specifically focuses on student learning experiences, sense of belonging and the role of student voice. She also is a guest improvisation tutor at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama.