About MeAmir Mahyar Tafreshipour is a leading Iranian contemporary composer. He specialises in contemporary music that reaches across time and continents and has worked with a number of major ensembles, soloists and orchestras. In 2003 he won the first prize at the biennial composition competition for new music at Tehran University with his solo piano work 'Images of Childhood' and in the same year he was awarded a silver medal for outstanding achievement at Trinity College of Music. The BBC commissioned a Harp Concerto in 2005, which was premiered under the baton of Pascal Rophé and broadcast on BBC Radio 3. His opera THE DOLL BEHIND the CURTAIN, based on a work by the Persian modernist writer Sadeq Hedayat and libretto by Dominic Power was premiered at the ‘Tete a Tete Opera Festival’ in King’s Place,2015 in London and Royal Danish Opera House,Coopenhagen in 2020. Amir Mahyar has studied Piano and Composition at the Esbjerg Academy of Music, Trinity College of Music, Guildhall School of Music and Drama and in 2016 he completed his PhD in composition at Brunel University, London, under the supervision of Dr. Christopher Fox. He is Currently working on a Violin concerto based inspired by Balouch music of east Iran, a second opera THE RED ROOM and his third opera, based on the struggle between the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company and Iranian prime minister Mohammad Mossadegh. PERSIAN ECHOES, a CD of Amir Mahyar Tafreshipour'smusic, peformed by the English Chamber Orchestra and the Crash Ensemble, is out now on the Naxos label. IN ABSENTIA and PERSIAN Autumn are both published by DivineArt which shares the music of both Tafreshipour, Fozie Majd and Hormoz Farhat. The next CD is a recording of the first Iranian modern chamber opera with an english libretto to be published in 2022 by BIS. In 2022/3 his second opera THE RED ROOM was premiered at the London Tete a Tete and Aalborg opera festival in Denmark. "Although Tafreshipour's music deals interestingly with the conflicted destinies of a modern Iranian generation, The Doll behind the curtain throws up interesting questions of desire cultural crisis” Charlotte Valori (bachtrack review) "His music is between the music cultures of western Europe and Iran producing fascinating music Schumann and Bartok too, would have understood the creative impulse behind these musical snap shots; both would have delighted in the strange Persian of the music” Christopher Fox "The Harp concerto is a fine and beautiful work. in this piece you have succeeded in bringing into the fabric of a serious contemporary musical creation ethnic elements without making the outcome cheap" Hormoz Farhat |