Bio:
Milad Yousufi was born in 1995 during the civil war in Afghanistan. At that time the Taliban were ruling Afghanistan, and music was completely banned. At the age of two he started drawing. He drew the piano keys on paper and pretended to play.
Milad Yousufi is a pianist, composer, conductor, poet, singer, painter and calligrapher. Yousufi’s work is deeply inspired by his country and culture.
When the Taliban rule was lifted after a period of five years, the arts flourished in Afghanistan Milad took advantage of every opportunity to learn and study music and art. By the age of 12 he was teaching painting and was able to attend the one and only music school in Kabul, after only three years of formal piano training, Milad was one of four students accepted into a music program in Denmark; He was also chosen to represent Afghanistan at various music festivals in The Netherlands, Belgium, Poland, and Germany. He placed third in the International Golden Key competition in Frankfurt, Germany.
Upon his return to Afghanistan, Milad concentrated on teaching piano, theory, and a course of music notation program (Sibelius) at the Afghanistan National Institute of Music.
In 2011 The Afghan Youth Orchestra was formed. Milad was the pianist and then became the first Afghan conductor and arranged music for their performances.
In 2013 the Afghan Youth Orchestra made a U.S. tour playing sold-out concerts in Carnegie Hall, the Kennedy Center, and New England Conservatory where he performed as a pianist.
Upon moving to the United States, Milad was awarded a full scholarship to attend Mannes School of Music as an undergraduate and studied piano with the world-renowned pianist Simone Dinnerstein, he graduated from Mannes School of Music in spring 2020. Milad received his masters degree in composition under Dr. Dalit Warshaw's mentorship from Brooklyn College in 2022. He had the opportunity to compose for The New York Philharmonic Chamber Orchestra, premiered at Lincoln Center; Refugee Orchestra Project; Kronos Quartet, premiered in Carnegie Hall; Music Worcester, Terezin Music Foundation, premiered in Boston Symphony Hall. Refugee Orchestra Project, premiered at the Barbican Center in London, Raleigh Civic Symphony Orchestra, Trio Solisti and Worcester Chamber Music Society. Upcoming commissions include Oxford Philharmonic Orchestra.The VISION Collective and Musaics of the Bay. Milad is on the directory board of Musaics of the Bay, the VISION Collective, an ambassador for Arium TV and a faculty member at Brooklyn Conservatory of Music.
Yousufi has a dream to make a difference in the future of music and culture in Afghanistan.
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Creators in the Matrix mathematically gravitate to proximity to all other creators in the Matrix — like stars coalescing into a galaxy — no matter how far apart in location, fame or society. This gravity is called "the small world phenomenon".
It's not which pill you take, it's which pathways you take. Pathways originating in the sprawling cultural matrix of Brazil: Indigenous, African, Sephardic and then Ashkenazic, European, Asian... Matrix Ground Zero is the Recôncavo, contouring the Bay of All Saints, earthly center of gravity for the disembarkation of enslaved human beings — and the sublimity they created — presided over by the ineffable Black Rome of Brazil: Salvador da Bahia.
("Black Rome" is an appellation per Caetano Veloso, son of the Recôncavo, via Mãe Aninha of Ilê Axé Opô Afonjá.)
"Dear Sparrow: I am thrilled to receive your email! Thank you for including me in this wonderful matrix."
—Susan Rogers: Personal recording engineer for Prince, inc. "Purple Rain", "Sign o' the Times", "Around the World in a Day"... Director of the Berklee Music Perception and Cognition Laboratory
I'm Pardal here in Brazil (that's "Sparrow" in English). The deep roots of this project are in Manhattan, where Allen Klein (managed the Beatles and The Rolling Stones) called me about royalties for the estate of Sam Cooke... where Jerry Ragovoy (co-wrote Time is On My Side, sung by the Stones; Piece of My Heart, Janis Joplin of course; and Pata Pata, sung by the great Miriam Makeba) called me looking for unpaid royalties... where I did contract and licensing for Carlinhos Brown's participation on Bahia Black with Wayne Shorter and Herbie Hancock...
...where I rescued unpaid royalties for Aretha Franklin (from Atlantic Records), Barbra Streisand (from CBS Records), Led Zeppelin, Mongo Santamaria, Gilberto Gil, Astrud Gilberto, Airto Moreira, Jim Hall, Wah Wah Watson (Melvin Ragin), Ray Barretto, Philip Glass, Clement "Sir Coxsone" Dodd for his interest in Bob Marley compositions, Cat Stevens/Yusuf Islam and others...
...where I worked with Earl "Speedo" Carroll of the Cadillacs (who went from doo-wopping as a kid on Harlem streetcorners to top of the charts to working as a janitor at P.S. 87 in Manhattan without ever losing what it was that made him special in the first place), and with Jake and Zeke Carey of The Flamingos (I Only Have Eyes for You)... stuff like that.
Yeah this is Bob's first record contract, made with Clement "Sir Coxsone" Dodd of Studio One and co-signed by his aunt because he was under 21. I took it to Black Rock to argue with CBS' lawyers about the royalties they didn't want to pay (they paid).
MATRIX MUSICAL
I built the Matrix below (I'm below left, with David Dye & Kim Junod for U.S. National Public Radio) among some of the world's most powerfully moving music, some of it made by people barely known beyond village borders. Or in the case of Sodré, his anthem A MASSA — a paean to Brazil's poor ("our pain is the pain of a timid boy, a calf stepped on...") — having blasted from every radio between the Amazon and Brazil's industrial south, before he was silenced. The Matrix started with Sodré, with João do Boi, with Roberto Mendes, with Bule Bule, with Roque Ferreira... music rooted in the sugarcane plantations of Bahia. Hence our logo (a cane cutter).