Haleh Abghari is a native of Iran and makes her home in New York City, where she remains an active performer of new music.  She has performed as a singer, actor, and voice-over artist in the U.S., Canada and Europe to critical acclaim.  The New York Times hailed her work in GeorgesAperghis' Recitations for Solo Voice as "a virtuoso and winning performance" and the Washington Post described her voice as ". . . [a] high, dry, sweet and piercingly pure soprano."

She was featured on Eat to Earon WNYC (New York’s Public Radio station) on an entire program dedicated to her work (http://www.wnyc.org/music/eartoear.html).

In addition to working with numerous living composers, Abghari has collaborated on a number of projects and site-specific installation-performances with visual and performance artists.  She appeared in A Woman’s Work Is Never Done:  a house of curiositiesby Conway & Pratt Projects– a multimedia installation-performance piece that ran for five weeks in Boston, MA.  Her collaboration with media artist Piotr Wyrzykowskiresulted in a number of performance-installations of Technopera 4._ in Germany, Poland and Canada, in addition to a CD-ROM titled The Cyborg Sex Manual, produced by The Center of Contemporary Art in Warsaw.  Abghari was featured in a video project by Istvan Kantor titled Brothers and Sisters.  She developed two site-specific installation-performances with composer Matthew Burtnerand a team of musicians and visual artists.  In 2008-09, she worked as a music programmer and host for WNYC and WQXR (NYC’s public radio stations).

With the Peabody Opera Theatre, she appeared in the title role of L’Enfant et les sortilèges, and as the Old Lady in Candide.  Additionally, she served as stage director for a full production of The Telephone with The Peabody Opera Theatre.  Abghari pursued her studies in music at The University of California at Davis, Peabody Conservatory, The Mannes College of Music, and the Banff Centre for the Arts in Canada.  Her major teachers include Phyllis Bryn-Julson, Adrienne Csengery, and Paul Hillier, and her vocal repertoire ranges from early music to art songs, opera, cabaret songs, and contemporary music.  Her awards include a Fulbright Scholar Grant to work on the vocal music of György Kurtág in Budapest, two Career Development Grants from the Peabody Conservatory, and The Presidential Undergraduate Fellowship from The University of California at Davis.

Abghari is an original member of Mouths Wide Open(MWO), an ad hoc group of volunteers dedicated to promoting active citizenship, civic dialogue, and finding new forms of political expression through the arts.  With MWO, she produced and created two performance events featuring renowned performers and commentators:  Breaking the Silenceat Symphony Space in opposition to the War on Iraq and The Republic in Ruins:  A Performance Collage of Music and Spoken Word in response to the RNC 2004at Washington Square Church.  She has been heard on WNYC, WBAI, and Air America among other radio stations and she is a featured soloist on a new CD recorded by composer and baritone saxophone player Fred Ho and The Afro-Asian Music Ensemble.