Niloufar Nourbakhsh was born in Iran in 1992. The first performance of Knell took place on September 4, 2019, as part of the Composer Lab & Workshop. Giancarlo Guerrero conducted the Nashville Symphony Orchestra. 

Knell is scored for piccolo, two flutes, two oboes, English horn, two clarinets in B-flat, bass clarinet, two bassoons, four horns in F, two trumpets in C, two trombones, tuba, timpani, crotales, gong, glockenspiel, xylophone, bass drum, harp, and strings. Approximate performance time is four minutes.

The music of Iranian-American composer Niloufar Nourbakhsh has been commissioned and performed by leading ensembles throughout the world. Nourbakhsh, the recipient of numerous distinguished awards and grants, is a founding member and co-director of the Iranian Female Composers Association. 

A graduate of Goucher College and Stony Brook University, Niloufar Nourbakhsh is a Mahoney and Caplan Scholar from University of Oxford. Nourbakhsh currently teachers theory and composition at Longy School of Bard College and Berklee College of Music, and frequently performs with her ensemble, Decipher. 

Knell is inspired by the definition of the word - the sound made by a bell when struck or rung, especially the sound of a bell rung slowly and solemnly, as immediately after a death or at a funeral. 

In the composer's words: 

"I aimed to depict a constant ringing bell that is re-contextualized with various evolving parallel lines that keep returning with a different orchestral color.

As I was finalizing the details of this piece for Nashville Symphony Orchestra, my mother passed away after a 2-year battle with cancer. My mother wore a necklace that held a gold heart and two silver-bronze pendants of her faith, Sufism. Whenever she walked to my room, the pendants would make a sparkling bell like sound, and I knew my mother is on her way to me. Naturally at the premiere, Knell became a symphonic procession for her loss.

When the Norwegian Radio Orchestra programmed Knell as a tribute to 2023 Nobel Peace Prize Laureate, Narges Mohammadi, it became a symphonic procession of not only my mother, but thousands of innocent Iranian people who had lost their lives during the woman life freedom movement in Iran. Formally, Knell functions as a prologue; I hope it’s a prologue to a future that is sparkling and bright like my mother’s necklace."