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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Shekare Azadi/Chasing Freedom, a multimedia project, was recently exhibited in Dentro gallery in Porto this Spring 2025 after being previously supported, featured and re-comissioned by Zaratan Arte Contemporânea (Lisbon) for their performance cycle “VOLTAS” across 2022-2024. 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. 

 

In addition to her solo and collaborative works Roxanna is the Founder and Artistic Director of Displaced - a concert series which brings artists and audiences together through interdisciplinary storytelling and collective memory. She has performed and worked extensively at venues including at Cafe Oto (London, 2023), Northern 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 worked with Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance as a graduate researcher from 2021-2024 and still continues her work there as improvisation coach and is currently directing the finale concert of the annual contemporary New Lights Festival. Her research was looking into the inequalities which exist between different student groups in a conservatoire setting. She is also a guest improvisation tutor at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama.