Travel ban keeping out Eastern Iowa brass band musician with dual citizenship in Norway and Iran

A Norwegian tenor horn player scheduled to compete in a national competition with Eastern Iowa brass musicians in early March has been told she can't travel to the United States because she has dual citizenship in Norway and Iran.

'It's a little insane to have the federal government stepping in and messing with a brass band competition,” said Alex Beamer, music director and conductor for the Eastern Iowa Brass Band and the Tall Grass Brass Band.

Beamer raised several thousand dollars to buy plane tickets for Paniz Golrang and Arfon Owen, both distinguished tenor horn players, to fly from Norway to Indiana to compete with the Tall Grass Brass Band at the championship level of the North American Brass Band Association competition March 10-11 in Fort Wayne.

Golrang, whose parents are Iranian, contacted the U.S. Embassy in Oslo Monday to see how President Donald Trump's new 90-day travel ban for people from seven countries, including Iran, might affect her trip.

'I am born in Norway with Iranian parents, and I hold a dual citizenship,” Golrang wrote in an email. 'I was at the embassy in Oslo in June 2016 and got a 10-year visa for travel to the USA. I have got tickets to go to Fort Wayne on Feb. 24, and I'm wondering how it works with the new sanctions that are going on.”

The U.S. Consul in Oslo wrote back to say Golrang would not be allowed to enter the U.S. for 90 days following Trump's executive order, issued Friday.

'Those nationals or dual nationals holding valid immigrant or nonimmigrant visas will not be permitted to enter the United States during this period either,” the unclassified email states. 'We sincerely apologize for this inconvenience and encourage you to check our website for a status update in 90 days.”

Golrang was devastated, she told The Gazette in an email Monday.

'To be personally invited by a foreign ensemble is an extreme honor and this is the first time this has happened to me,” she wrote. 'So to be denied the opportunity due to a blanket ban on Iranians is very heartbreaking.”

Golrang, 24, a university student studying petroleum engineering, was particularly surprised by the travel ban because she just returned from Houston, where she was on a field trip.

'This is the first time that I have experienced hostility toward me purely because of my ethnic background,” Golrang wrote. 'Being born and raised in Norway I generally consider myself a Norwegian, and my dual nationality with Iran is purely one of ceremony, granted to me automatically at birth.”

Golrang and Owen live in Figgjo, a small village in the southern part of Norway, and have been practicing the competition music together for several weeks, she said. Now Owen will go to Indiana and Golrang will stay home. Beamer, for his part, will be scrambling to find another tenor horn player.

'Tenor horn is not that common here at all,” he said about the United States.

The Tall Grass Brass Band has 30 members, including nine members of the Eastern Iowa Brass Band, a British-styled brass band based in Mount Vernon.

l Comments: (319) 339-3157; erin.jordan@thegazette.com