Aida Huseynova ( – 20 June 2022) was a musicologist, pianist, and ethnomusicologist from Azerbaijan. She spent the last decade and a half of her career teaching in the Music in General Studies program at Indiana University--Bloomington and serving as an arts consultant for Yo-Yo Ma's

Silk Road Ensemble Silkroad, formerly the Silk Road Project, Inc., is a not-for-profit organization, initiated by the cellist Yo-Yo Ma in 1998, promoting collaboration among artists and institutions, promoting multicultural artistic exchange, and studying the ebb and ...

, the Mike Morris Dance group, and other ensembles and initiatives. Huseynova died in

Istanbul Istanbul ( , ; tr, İstanbul ), formerly known as Constantinople ( grc-gre, Κωνσταντινούπολις; la, Constantinopolis), is the List of largest cities and towns in Turkey, largest city in Turkey, serving as the country's economic, ...

on 20 June 2022 aged 57.

Early life and education

Huseynova was raised in

Baku Baku (, ; az, Bakı ) is the capital and largest city of Azerbaijan, as well as the largest city on the Caspian Sea and of the Caucasus region. Baku is located below sea level, which makes it the lowest lying national capital in the world a ...

, where she attended the Baku State Conservatory (now the Hajibeyov Baku Academy of Music) and received her bachelor's degree in 1987. One of her professors was the composer and pianist Elmira Nazirova. Huseynova identified Nazirova as an inspiration for

Dmitri Shostakovich Dmitri Dmitriyevich Shostakovich, , group=n (9 August 1975) was a Soviet-era Russian composer and pianist who became internationally known after the premiere of his Symphony No. 1 (Shostakovich), First Symphony in 1926 and was regarded throug ...

's Tenth Symphony. Huseynova earned her PhD from the St. Petersburg Conservatory in 1992, finishing her doctoral studies during the collapse of the

Soviet Union The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen national ...

. Her doctoral dissertation examined the Azerbaijani composer Muslim Magomayev.

Career

During the 1990s, Huseynova taught at the Baku State Conservatory. In the 2000s, she held positions at the Jacobs School of Music, Indiana University—Bloomington, including as a Fulbright Scholar, and eventually joined the faculty of the Music in General Studies program. Among the courses she taught were Music of the Silk Road, Music of Russia, and East-West Encounters in Music, and Popular Music of Europe and Asia. The fusion of Azerbaijani musical traditions, particularly mugham, with Western classical music, jazz, and popular music was of abiding interest to Huseynova. Her scholarship drew upon the critical paradigms of the Azerbaijani music educator and founder of the Baku State Conservatory

Uzeyir Hajibeyli Uzeyir bey Abdulhuseyn oghlu Hajibeyov ( az, Üzeyir bəy Əbdülhüseyn oğlu Hacıbəyov; russian: Узеир Абдул-Гусейн оглы Гаджибеков, translit=Uzeir Abdul-Guseyn ogly Gadzhibekov; September 18, 1885November 23, 19 ...

, whose opera ''

Leyli and Majnun ''Layla & Majnun'' ( ar, مجنون ليلى ; Layla's Mad Lover) is an old story of Arab origin, about the 7th-century Bedouin poet Qays ibn al-Mulawwah and his ladylove Layla bint Mahdi (later known as Layla al-Aamiriya). "The Layla ...

'' was a focal point of her scholarship and creative work. She published scholarship in Russian, Azerbaijani, and English. Her major English-language monograph was ''Music of Azerbaijan: From Mugham to Opera'' (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2016). A public scholar, Huseynova was a speaker at concerts and other events that engaged audiences beyond the academic realm. She appeared at the International Festival and Symposium of Contemporary Music's “Icebreaker III: The Caucasus” and served on the advisors’ committee of the Sixth Annual San Francisco World Music Festival. In 2018, Huseynova was part of the MusicUnitesUS residency of Fargana Qasimova at Brandeis University.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Huseynova, Aida 1964 births 2022 deaths People from Baku Indiana University Bloomington alumni Baku Academy of Music alumni