(BA) Bachelor of Arts in Music, University of California, Berkeley.

Ali Saniee (b. 1997) is an Iranian American classical opera scholar, violinist, and pianist. He earned his bachelor’s degree in music from the University of California, Berkeley. Although he mainly studied classical and romantic operas, he also focused on chamber music performance as a violinist during his undergraduate studies. He studied violin with Professors Siavash Zahireddini and Marjan Ghanbarimehr at Tehran University of Art (Iran), with Prof. Karin Regina-Flory at Vorarlberg State Conservatory (Austria), and with Prof. Dan Flanagan at UC Berkeley (USA). He has actively taught classical violin, piano, and music theory since 2017. In addition, he was approved and became the first undergraduate student lecturer for two lectures on Mozart’s late Italian operas at the Tehran University of Art in the same year.

Additionally, Ali is a former member of CMNC (Chamber Musicians of Northern California) and played in numerous string ensembles and orchestras in Iran and the United States, including the UC Berkeley Orchestra. He was always enthusiastically involved in operatic research during his undergraduate years and wrote his thesis on the history of opera performance in Iran. Since his musicology Ph.D. program began at UC Davis, he has focused on Mozart’s late-period and Verdi’s middle-period operas.