Alireza Mashayekhi (born 1940) is an Iranian musician, composer, conductor and academic. He is one of the first composers in Iran to represent avant-garde and electroacoustic music.

Early life and education

Mashayekhi was born in Tehran in 1940. After graduating from the University of Music and Performing Arts in Vienna, he went to Utrecht, the Netherlands, to study electronic and computer music at the Institute of Sonology under Gottfried Michael Koenig.

Career

In 1993, with cooperation of the pianist Farima Ghavam-Sadri, Mashayekhi founded the Tehran Contemporary Music Group. In 1995 he established the Iranian Orchestra for New Music, which released its first recording in 2002 on Hermes Records. In 2007, Belgian experimental label Sub Rosa released Persian Electronic Music: Yesterday and Today 1966–2006, a double-disc anthology that includes works by Mashayekhi and Ata Ebtekar. In 2009, Brandon Nickell’s Isounderscore label released the vinyl double LP Ata Ebtekar & The Iranian Orchestra for New Music Performing Works of Alireza Mashayekhi "Ornamental". Mashayekhi granted Ebtekar full creative freedom to work with the Iranian Orchestra for New Music to arrange and transform his compositions.

Musical language

Mashayekhi's music circulates between a range of styles and genres, from classical compositions inspired by Persian rhythms and Iranian folk music that incorporate meditated repetition and polyphony, to atonal compositions, to works for tape and live electronics that combine traditional Iranian and Western instruments. Mashayekhi calls his compositional practice "Meta-X," referring to the sonic multiplicities present in his work (as contradictions of tonal/atonal, improvised/pre-defined, Persian/non-Persian) that unify within a single musical piece.

Released albums and published books and scores