Standing with the People of Iran:
Echoes of Stolen Lives

On December 28, 2025, millions of Iranians took to the streets, calling for dignity, freedom, and an end to decades of repression. In response, the Islamic Republic of Iran unleashed one of the deadliest crackdowns in its history. Tens of thousands were killed, many shot at close range, including children, women, and young people, and thousands more were blinded, injured, or arrested, all under a nationwide internet blackout to this day that plunged the country into digital darkness, crippling communication, erasing evidence, and preventing people from seeking help.

Families grieve. Communities endure. And yet, their courage echoes.

To honor those lives stolen and to stand in solidarity with the people of Iran, MAPP brings together eight artists from Iranian, Kurdish, Armenian, and Arab backgrounds. Through music, reflection, and shared witness, we mourn, remember, and lift the voices that authoritarian regimes try to erase.

Join us for an evening of remembrance, resistance, and hope. 

Read the full statement on the ongoing struggle and the call for global accountability [here].

FEBRUARY 7TH MAPP PROGRAM

Red Poppy Art House
2698 Folsom @23rd
Curator: Dina Zarif

MAPP (Mission Art Performance Project)
Saturday, February 7, 2026
Doors open at 6:45 pm
7 p.m. to 10 p.m. event

Standing with the People of Iran
Echoes of Stolen Lives

7:00 – 7:10 PM: Video Projection (Witness Iran)
7:20 – 7:45 PM: Yearning for Homeland (Lebanese-Armenian vocals & duduk)
8:00 – 8:25 PM: Love Tunes from Iran (Harp, clarinet & vocals)
8:40 – 8:55 PM: Between Two Rivers (Contemporary Kurdish folk)
9:10 – 10:00 PM: Echoes of Zagros (Love, resilience & freedom)
Video Projection “Witness Iran” during the night. 

Exhibition: Andrea Guskin – Fracture Zones, exploring rupture & resilience
Poster graphic design by Romina Zabihian

THIS IS A FREE EVENT
RSVP HERE

MAPP (Mission Arts & Performance Project)

Launched in 2003, the Mission Arts & Performance Project (MAPP) is a homegrown bi-monthly, multidisciplinary, intercultural event that takes place in the Mission District of San Francisco. On the first Saturday of every even month of the year, the MAPP transforms ordinary spaces, such as private garages, gardens, living rooms, studios, street corners, and small businesses into pop-up performance and exhibition sites for a day/night of intimate-scale artistic and cultural exchange among a kaleidoscope of individuals and communities. 

RED POPPY MAPP TEAM:

Artistic Director | Managing Director: Dina Zarif 
Content manager: Jennie Legary
Sound crew: Andrew Scott
Host: Verda Bursal

Yearning for Homeland 

Lebanese-Armenian vocals & duduk
Khatchadour will present Armenian songs of loss, grief and of yearning for the beloved and for homeland. He will share with the community several pieces narrating stories through both singing and performing on the Armenian woodwind, Duduk.

Featuring:

Khatchadour Khatchadourian – Vocal & Duduk

Khatchadour is a Lebanese-Armenian vocalist and duduk player based out of the Bay Area. His vocal repertoire is grounded in the Armenian and Levantine Arabic vocal traditions. Growing up within the Armenian diaspora on the Lebanese Mediterranean coast, and later having spent many years in Aleppo, Syria, Khatchadour’s voice pays homage to the vocal landscapes spanning the regions of the South Caucasus, Levant, and Anatolia. Khatchadour’s passion for the duduk, an Armenian double reed woodwind, began in 2007, and has since taken him on musical journeys across Armenia and Southern France. He studies under master duduk player, Levon Minassian. Additionally, for the past few years, Khatchadour has been immersed in the study of Persian vocal Radif, and sings in Farsi, under the instruction of master vocalist Mahsa Vahdat. 

Khatchadour is currently completing his 6th album, Shounch: Breath, which is partially funded and made possible through the Musical Grant Program, administered by InterMusic SF, and supported by the Clarence E. Heller Charitable Foundation and the Hewlett Foundation.

Love Tunes from Iran 

 Iranian Classical & Folk Music – A Soundscape of Tragedy & Triumph
This project is a collaboration between Dina Zarif, Iranian immigrant singer, and Amelia Romano, San Francisco–based harpist, blending classical and folk music into a seamless sonic journey. Their performances fuse Iranian classical and folk traditions with South American–inspired rhythms, creating a soundscape of tragedy and triumph that explores themes of immigration, homeland, and cultural memory. Since 2016, they have headlined stages at the San Francisco International Arts Festival (Fort Mason), Montalvo Arts Center, Yerba Buena Gardens Festival, Palace of Fine Arts, Brava Theater, and the Asian Art Museum.

Featuring:
Dina Zarif – Vocal
Amelia Romano – Harp
Asaf Ophir – woodwinds

Dina Zarif is a San Francisco–based multidisciplinary performing artist, designer, curator, and arts activist, born and raised in Iran. As a vocalist, she fuses Western classical technique with Middle Eastern and Persian traditions, creating a distinctive sound rooted in her cultural heritage.

As an actress, Zarif has trained and worked under renowned Iranian theater master Bahram Beyzaie at Stanford University’s Iranian Studies Program. Her stage credits include Ardaviraf’s Report, Tarabnameh (musical), Crossroads, The Language of Wild Berries (Golden Thread Productions, 2022), and Exodus to Eden (Oakland Theater Project, 2023). Most recently, she appeared in Dash Akol According to Marjan, which premiered in two parts at Berkeley Repertory Theatre’s Roda Theatre (2024–2025), and in Leili and Majnun musical (2024–2025).

Zarif starred in the title role of the feature film MITRA (2021), which premiered at the International Film Festival Rotterdam.

As a shadow performer and costume designer, Zarif toured internationally with the cinematic shadow play Feathers of Fire: A Persian Epic, winner of the 2019 UNIMA Award for Excellence in Live Performance and Design. The production toured extensively with over 100 performances worldwide, including major institutions such as Brooklyn Academy of Music, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Musée du quai Branly (Paris), and leading international festivals across Europe, Asia, and the United States.

Zarif has served as a panelist for the San Francisco Arts Commission Community Investments Committee and is currently the Artistic and Managing Director of Red Poppy Art House, a multidisciplinary artist incubator in San Francisco. She holds an MA in Landscape Architecture from the University of Tehran, College of Fine Arts.

Amelia Romano (harp, voice) is a lever harpist, programming classical re-imaginations alongside original works. She received her master’s in classical lever harp performance at San Francisco State University under the tutelage of Karen Gottlieb, retired second harpist of the San Francisco Symphony. Her latest album, “Levers Engaged: Classical Works Re-imaged for Harp ” and sheet music collection “Classical Re-imaginations,” present the instrument as a valid voice in classical music. A composer, arranger and trailblazer in the lever harp world, she is equally at home writing Latin America inspired works for solo harp as she is adapting classical pieces for chamber collaborations.

Asaf Ophir (woodwinds, voice, guitar) began his professional career in musical theaters in Israel, while studying at the Rimon School of Jazz and Contemporary Music, and later at the Jerusalem Academy. Arriving in the United States in 2014, he began to perform in musicals around the Bay Area such as the award winning Love Sick in 2017, and The People in the Picture in 2018. Finding a home away from home, he can most often be seen in world music projects on Jewish, Arabic, and Balkan stages.

Asaf has performed on such distinguished stages as Habima, HaCameri, and Jerusalem Theaters in Israel, as well as the Paramount Theater, the Palace of Fine Arts, the Great American Concert Hall, Freight and Salvage, Brava Theater, and others in the San Francisco Bay Area. Throughout his career he has shared the stage with artists such as Miri Mesika, Avi Kushnir, Galit Giat, Rana Farhan, Ustad Mahwash, and Barbara Streisand. 

Between Two Rivers

Contemporary Kurdish folk

Featuring:
Elana Sasson – Vocal 

Elana is a vocalist, composer, and bandleader creating music at the intersection of Kurdish and Persian traditions, contemporary jazz, and Mediterranean folkloric influences. She explores themes of identity and duality: weaving emotive modal melodies, intricate harmonic textures, and diverse instrumentation to dialogue between tradition and modernity.

Shaped by years of training with master musicians from Iran and Kurdistan and studies at the Berklee College of Music in Valencia, Elana’s clear voice reflects a fusion of rich tradition and personal expression. Her music has been celebrated with nods from global press such as Songlines Magazine, who described her voice as “an arrestingly beautiful focus” and gave a 4 star review to the album ‘Golestan’. Her new album, ’In Between’ released with PKMusik in April 2025 and received shining reviews from press, including a 4 star review from Songlines.

She has graced global stages at prestigious venues such as Fundación Juan March (Madrid, Spain), Palau de Les Arts Reina Sofia (Valencia, Spain), Stone Nest (London, UK), Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (San Francisco, California), and Fabrica Research Centre (Treviso, Italy). Elana has been featured in festivals across Europe such as UPV Jazz Festival in Valencia, Spain, Isole Che Parlano in Sardigna, Italy, and AtoJazz Festival in Sofia, Bulgaria.

Elana’s voice can be heard on Growing Songs, a 2024 album produced by esteemed Iranian vocalist Mahsa Vahdat, and her music was featured in the 2023 Venice Biennale-premiered film Tatami. She has collaborated with renowned musicians such as Matthieu Saglio, Mahsa Vahdat, Perico Sambeat, and Hadar Noiberg.

Elana holds a Master of Music in Contemporary Performance and Production from Berklee College of Music in Valencia and a BA in Design Media Arts from UCLA. She was a resident at Fabrica Research Centre in 2019 and is a member of the Iranian Female Composers Association (IFCA).

Echoes of Zagros

Love, resilience & freedom
In Solidarity with the People of Iran

Echoes of Zagros brings together Kurdish musical traditions in solidarity with the people of Iran. Rooted in the sounds of the Zagros Mountains, the program weaves ancestral rhythms and melodies into a shared human story of resilience, love, and freedom. 

Featuring:

Nariman Assadi – Daf 
Asaf Ophir – Clarinet
Evîn Şah – Vocal 
Raman osman – Baglama

Evîn Şah is a Kurdish singer and performer who brings together the traditional roots of Kurdish music with a contemporary interpretation. She was born in Muş, Turkey, and was introduced to Kurdish folk music at an early age, particularly the dengbêji tradition. Throughout her artistic journey, she has aimed to preserve this heritage through both live performance and recorded work, while carrying it to diverse audiences and geographies.

Evîn Şah completed her music education at the Istanbul University State Conservatory, where she received training in folk music and modal (maqam-based) traditions. Combining her academic background with extensive stage experience, she has developed a distinctive vocal style of her own. Her repertoire features primarily Kurmanji, alongside other Kurdish dialects, as well as songs in Turkish and Armenian. Blending traditional melodies with modern arrangements forms the core of her musical identity.

She has performed widely in Turkey and abroad, taking part in concerts, cultural events, festivals, and special projects. In her work, music is not only an aesthetic expression but also a means of memory, identity, and cultural transmission.

Since 2019, Evîn Şah has focused on studio production. She released the 9-minute potpourri single “Hine”, followed in 2021 by “Şahino,” a tribute to her cultural roots. The music video for Şahino was filmed in the United States. Both of her music videos were directed by her husband, Oktay Şahin.

In 2019, Evîn Şah relocated with her family from Turkey to California, USA, where she continues her musical work today. With her strong stage presence and emotionally powerful interpretations, she stands out as an artist who resonates with both the Kurdish community and international audiences.

Nariman Assadi was born in Hamedan, Iran on January 1, 1992. Raised in Tehran, he always felt drawn to percussion instruments. At the age of thirteen, he began studying Tombak under Master Amir Mogharab Samadi. In 2007, he was invited to Pars Academy, the premier music academy for children. Following Pars Academy, Nariman was selected to be a member of the Persian Percussion Ensemble, which included a hundred percussionists. From 2008 to 2013, Nariman performed at Vahdat Hall as a soloist and with the Persian Percussion Ensemble. After mastering Tombak, he then began teaching himself how to play the Daf and later was trained under the great Master Bijan Kamkar. With a strong understanding of the Daf and Tombak, Nariman wanted to further his skills as a percussionist by learning the melodic instrument, Barbat (Oud) under Master Mohammad Firouzi. In 2015, Nariman immigrated to the United States. He immediately began his professional music career by performing and attending festivals throughout the Northern California area. Along with being a member of various ensembles, Nariman also teaches Daf and Tombak.

Raman Osman is a Kurdish composer and master tembûr (saz) musician from Al-Hasaka, Syria. In his early age, he was exposed to a variety of music and cultural sources like Kurdish, Persian, Arabic, Turkish, Armenian, Assyrian, and more. Osman has performed at a variety of venues, including the Damascus Opera House, several universities in Syria, and throughout the Bay Area.

IN PERSON EVENT DETAILS

Time: Saturday, February 7th, 2026, 7pm- 10pm (IN-PERSON)

Admission: Free!

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