HALEH LIZA GAFORI presents RUMI: GOLD & WATER A night of music and poetry

Featuring Haleh Gafori, Grammy-nominated multi-instrumentalist Shahzad Ismaily, cellist Isabel Castellvi, & percussionist Mathias Künzli!
About this Event

GOLD & WATER: The Poetry of Rumi, with Haleh Liza Gafori

Join performance artist, translator, and musician Haleh Liza Gafori for a transcendent and startling night of music and poetry, featuring acclaimed translations of the 13th century mystic Rumi (published in two volumes, Gold and Water, by New York Review Books) and musical compositions sung in the original Persian.

Accompanied by Grammy-nominated multi-instrumentalist Shahzad Ismaily, world-class cellist Isabel Castellvi, and percussionist Mathias Künzli, Gafori creates a vibrant cross-cultural musical and poetic dialogue as Rumi’s words urgently and tenderly speak to us in these times, ushering us into more loving and soulful realms of being.

-“If you haven’t heard Rumi’s work performed by a translator who can read him—and sing him—in the original Persian, this Rumi, presented by translator—and rock star—Haleh Liza Gafori is for you.” – Rebecca Solnit

“The indelible voice may belong to Haleh Liza Gafori, but her channeling of Rumi is so complete--the poems brilliantly translated into English and the original Persian text sung so soulfully--you'll swear you’re in the company of Rumi too. Never seen an entire audience levitate? Make your way to a Haleh Rumi concert and transcend.” – Bob Holman“Ecstatic and piercing” – V (formerly Eve Ensler)

“Haleh Liza Gafori’s Gold is everything Rumi was himself—sacred, profane, laugh out loud funny, deeply earnest, demotic, and yes, Persian. What a gift this is, what gold.” — Kaveh Akbar“Haleh Liza Gafori’s energetic translation delivers Rumi’s introspective nature, cosmic vision, and deeply contemplative poems.” —Publishers Weekly

Haleh Liza Gafori is a New York City-born translator, performance artist, writer and educator of Iranian descent. Her two volumes of translations of poetry by the 13th century sage Rumi, entitled Gold (2022) and Water (2025), were published by New York Review Books/NYRB Classics. Gafori was a 2026 and 2024 MacDowell fellow, and a 2023 recipient of the New York State Council on the Arts grant. She created a musical and cross-media performance based on the book and has presented her work, via performance and lectures and workshops, at institutions such as Lincoln Center, Stanford University, the Academy of American Poets, and Sarah Lawrence College. Her work has been published by Columbia University Press, Harvard Review, World Literature Today, Lit Hub, Paris Review, and others. She teaches at the MFA writing program at St. Joseph’s University, and her books of translations Gold and Water have been incorporated in the curricula of universities across the country.

Agenda

🕑: 06:30 PM - 07:00 PM
Doors Open
🕑: 07:00 PM - 08:00 PM
Performance
🕑: 08:00 PM - 08:30 PM
Book Signing