Niyaz at the Williams Center

A heady blend of acoustic and electronic, East and West, poetry and politics, Niyaz’s richly textured arrangements, sweeping choruses, and velvety vocals—courtesy of front woman Azam Ali—take inspiration from Sufi poetry, Middle Eastern folk music, and the musicians’ experiences as 21st-century global citizens. It’s “Los Angeles meets New Delhi meets Tehran,” notes NPR, yet The Fourth Light Project is a world unto itself—a modern-day global trance experience, featuring one of the first female whirling dervishes and hypnotic body-mapping projections that respond to sound and movement in real time.