Progetto Positano 2025

This year, Zara Ali and Arash Yazdani are the two scholarship holders of the Progetto Positano. They will each spend four weeks in Positano on the Wilhelm Kempff Foundation’s estate. On 29 October 2025, ensemble mosaik will present works by the two scholarship holders in a concert at the Kesselhaus in the Kulturbrauerei in Berlin.

Zara Ali is an American composer and based in Germany. Her diverse musical style encompasses vivid programs, rich microtonal harmonies, close attention to electroacoustic tone color, and the translation of structural concepts (e.g., geometry, kinetics, temporality) into sound. Her music has been programmed in Europe, North America and Asia, including in Berlin Konzerthaus, Gaudeamus Muziekweek, impuls Festival for Contemporary Music, cresc. Biennale für aktuelle Musik Frankfurt Rhein Main, the Royaumont Festival, Archipel Festival, Tanglewood Festival, and Seoul International Computer Music Festival.
In 2023, she won the renowned Gaudeamus Award and was selected for Deutsche Oper’s New Scenes VII for a new work for chamber opera. In 2022, she received the Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy Award in Composition from the Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy Hochschulwettbewerb, the oldest classical music competition in Germany. She also received the Sonderpreis from the Freunde Junger Musiker Deutschland. In 2021, she received the JACK Studio Award competitive studio grant from the renowned JACK Quartet to compose a new work to be premiered in their 2023 season. In 2017, she received the Robert H. Burns Prize in chamber music composition. Zara received her B.A. from Columbia University in 2018 and her M.M. in music composition at the Hochschule für Musik Detmold in 2022. Zara was the composer-in-residence of the Internationale Ensemble Modern Akademie for 2022-23.

Further information about Zara Ali you will find here.

Estonian-based composer Arash Yazdani studied at The Royal College of Music in Stockholm, Musikakademie Basel and Estonian Academy of Music and Theatre and earned degrees in piano, double bass, orchestral conducting and composition. Yazdani’s music is characterised by his application of acoustic and psycho-acoustic phenomena on the fabric of music and his creation of unique hearing experiences with the use of instruments. Among other accolades and awards, his orchestra piece NAKBA was selected by the Estonian Radio to represent Estonia in the International Rostrum of Composers 2019. Yazdani is the artistic director of Sound Plasma, a music festival for alternative intonations in Berlin and Tallinn, and the artistic director and conductor of the Ensemble for New Music Tallinn. He is the 2020 recipient of the Jonathan Harvey Scholarship and a was a teaching assistant at the University of Huddersfield until 2023.

You will find more information about Arash Yazdani here.