No Lines in the Sea: featuring Elana Sasson

A FLOWING THROUGH TIME AND TRADITION PROGRAM

Don’t miss the chance to hear the dynamic, internationally acclaimed musician and recording artist Elana Sasson, in concert with Queralt Giralt on cello and Bahar Badieitabar on oud.

Ten songs about water, sung in seven languages: Spanish, Ladino, Greek, Persian, Gilaki, Kurdish, and Catalan. Water as hope and survival, as celebration and mourning, as memory and loss. Drawn from traditions that have crossed oceans and mountain ranges, these songs travel the same routes as the communities who carried them: from medieval Iberia across the Mediterranean, from the Caspian shores to the Aegean, from the mountains of Kurdistan to distant rivers. Four original compositions intertwine with traditional songs and works by other composers, creating a journey shaped by movement, exile, and belonging.

Thursday, April 16, 2026 | 5:30-7:00 pm

In person at the Magnes Collection of Jewish Art and Life, 2121 Allston Way, Berkeley, CA

Tickets on sale soon!

If you have any questions about accessibility or require accommodations to participate in this event, please contact us at magnes@berkeley.edu or call us at (510) 643-2526 with as much advance notice as possible.

Elana Sasson 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). elanasasson.com

Queralt Giralt Soler is a cellist, vocalist, composer, and music educator, recognized for her innovative fusion of cello and voice. With a style that blurs the boundaries between her influences from classical, jazz, folk, and contemporary music, she brings a deeply personal sound to every performance.

A graduate of ESMUC (Escola Superior de Música de Catalunya) in Barcelona, she completed her final degree project, “Aprenentatge musical i expressivitat artística,” with the distinction of summa cum laude, reflecting her strong commitment to excellence in both artistic and pedagogical fields. She later continued her studies at Berklee College of Music in Boston, where she received the prestigious Berklee World Tour Scholarship and the Berklee String Department Award 2025, in recognition of her outstanding artistic trajectory and contribution to the string community.

At Berklee, she was part of the Institute of Jazz and Gender Justice, founded by Terri Lyne Carrington, and received mentorship from pioneering artists such as Linda May Han Oh, Kris Davis, Eugene Friesen, and Jeremy Harman, among others, helping redefine the future of jazz and modern strings through equity, innovation, and experimentation.

Her artistic voice shines both in her solo work and in collective projects such as the Clarity String Quartet and the Zambra Collective, where she combines improvisation, storytelling, and diverse multicultural influences. She is also actively involved in interdisciplinary collaborations, including the DMI Fresh Media gallery installation “Echoes of Green Street,” for which she collaborated with visual artists and builders, composing and producing the music for the installation.

Based between the United States and Catalonia, she performs regularly on both continents. She has collaborated with a wide range of renowned artists, including Kenny Barron, Jacques Morelenbaum, Joe Lovano, Darol Anger, and the Latin Grammy-winning group Las Migas. Her performances have been heard on stages such as Carnegie Hall, the Detroit Jazz Festival, and numerous festivals and concert halls across Europe and the United States.

As an educator, Queralt is committed to fostering artistic expression, musical fluency, and creative confidence in students of all ages. Since 2024, she has been part of the teaching team at Tallers Musicals d’Avinyó, where she shares her experience in an environment that values exploration, collaboration, and artistic identity.

Bahar Badieitabar is a Brooklyn-based oudist, composer, and educator originally from Tehran, Iran, whose work spans Iranian classical music, contemporary concert music, jazz, and free improvisation. A graduate of Berklee College of Music on a Presidential Scholarship, her diverse background shapes a distinctive approach to composition and improvisation.

She has taught workshops on Iranian classical music at institutions including Silkroad and won first place at the Iranian Youth National Music Festival for two consecutive years. Bahar has performed at prestigious venues such as the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and National Sawdust, as well as festivals in Iran and the U.S., including the New York Oud Festival.

A member of Danilo Perez’s Global Jazz Messengers, she has collaborated with artists including John Patitucci, Brian Blade, Danilo Perez, and Bruno Raberg. She recently completed her master’s degree at the Berklee Global Jazz Institute.

All About Jazz has described her as “a master improviser,” whose playing is “free of tonal constraint.”

About the exhibition
Exploring the theme of water through the holdings of the Magnes Collection, Flowing through Time and Tradition traces how water flows through and shapes Jewish lives: enacting belief, sustaining life and communities, providing the means for spiritual cleansing, and mapping identities.