Aysel Taghi-Zada

Aysel Taghi-Zada is a passionate violinist devoted to the performance of classical and contemporary music. She has collaborated with some of the most distinguished composers and musicians from North America and Europe such as Philip Glass, Brian Current, Salvatore Sciarrino, Chris Paul Harman, Kevin Lau, Mark Fewer, Pierre Leroux, David Geringas and Pascale Beaudin. She is frequently invited to perform with contemporary ensembles such as Tapestry Opera, New Music Concerts, Thin Edge New Music Collective and Soundstreams Canada, and she recently participated in Continuum Contemporary Music’s Hatch Summer Performance program as an emerging artist.

She is also a founding member of the Vaso String Quartet, which performs around North America and participated in the 2019 Scotia Festival of Music in Halifax. She is a founding member and core ensemble member of Toronto-based collective, Freesound. As a recording artist, she can be heard on Jason Doell’s 2018 album … Amid the Cannon’s Roar, Catherine Daniel’s Sacred Christmas, and the Marrieds’ Fire in the Flame.
She was invited to be a Guest Concertmaster for the Georgian Bay Symphony in 2018 and 2019, and a Guest Assistant Concertmaster for the Kingston Symphony Orchestra in 2019. She has performed with several orchestras, including the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, Canadian Opera Company, Windsor Symphony, Thunder Bay Symphony Orchestra, Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony Orchestra and Toronto Concert Orchestra.

In 2019, Aysel participated in a residency at Lunenburg Academy of Music Performance, where she worked with Gidon Kremer. She is a graduate of the Artist Diploma Program at the Glenn Gould School where she studied with Barry Shiffman. While studying at McGill University with Jonathan Crow, she co-founded Ensemble Paramirabo, a group that specializes in showcasing music written by Canadian composers, and she performed on their first album Autoportrait. She is currently a violin instructor with the Columbus Cultural Centre, where her studio includes students of all ages, and she was a mentor with the Waterloo Region Contemporary Music Sessions in 2018 and the Toronto Creative Music Lab in 2019.