Cello, Juan Aguilera Cerezo 

First performance: 05.07.2021 
Alcala la Real / Antiguo Convento La Trinidad (Spain) 

video score: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nqPBDfPWcMA

5 Ricercari for solo cello (2020)

for more information please visit: 
https://ashkanbehzadi.com

Contact: 
behzadi.ashkan@gmail.com

Ashkan Behzadi, a recipient of 2025 Ernst von Siemens Composer Prize and a 2021–2022 Guggenheim Fellow in Music Composition, is an Iranian-Canadian composer based in New York. He earned his DMA in composition at Columbia University, where he studied with Fred Lerdahl, George Lewis, and Georg Friedrich Haas. Prior to this, he graduated from McGill University with a bachelor’s degree in composition and music theory, studying composition with Chris Paul Harman and Brian Cherney. Ashkan also holds a bachelor’s degree in architecture from Tehran University, where, at the same time, he took composition and music theory lessons with Alireza Mashayekhi.
Ashkan’s music has been commissioned and performed by various international performers and ensembles, including Ensemble Recherche, TAK Ensemble, Oerknal Ensemble, Ensemble Mosaik, Yarn/Wire, JACK Quartet, Grossman Ensemble, Divertimento Ensemble, Ensemble Alternance, Ensemble UnitedBerlin, Exaudi, Ekmeles, Wet Ink, Talea Ensemble, and le Nouvel Ensemble Moderne (NEM). 
His work has also been recognized with awards, artist residencies, and participation in festivals such as the Koussevitzky Foundation, Fromm Foundation, New York State Council on the Arts, the Graham Sommer Second Prize, the Prix de Composition at Fontainebleau, the MacDowell Fellowship, the Civitella Ranieri Fellowship, the Divertimento Ensemble Composers Meeting, the Dialoge Festival at Stiftung Mozarteum Salzburg, the Manifeste Festival at IRCAM, and the CIRMMT New Music Series.
For the 2019–2020 academic year, Ashkan Behzadi joined the Department of Music at the University of Chicago as a Postdoctoral Researcher in the Center for Contemporary Composition. Since september 2023, he teaches at the Manhattan School of Music as a faculty member in Music Composition.
The issue of genre identity or genre-blurring, along with the dialectical relationship between modernist lyric poetry and contemporary music, has formed the core of Ashkan’s aesthetic concerns in recent years. Structurally, his music demonstrates a great attention to detail, conveying a miniaturist and gentle lyrical landscape. By employing techniques of allusion and pastiche as the foundation of his craft, his music ultimately seeks to invoke the collective memory of folklore music.

Ali Latif-Shushtari (*1990) was born in Iran. After studying Mathematics in high school, he started an academic major in Solid-state Physics at the University of Isfahan and the University of Kashan, successfully fulfilling both a BSc and an MSc specializing in Nano-electronics. Alongside his academic studies, he began to educate himself in classical music and soon discovered his passion for music theory and composition which finally led him to change his academic focus. In September 2019, he was admitted directly to a Master’s degree program in Music Composition at Hochschule der Künste Bern (HKB), a program he successfully finished in October 2022 under the mentorship of Xavier Dayer, Simon Steen-Andersen, and Leo Dick. He has attended numerous workshops and masterclasses instructed by composers such as Stefan Prins, Mauro Lanza, Dieter Ammann, Oscar Bianchi, and Gilbert Nouno. His music has been performed by ensembles such as Ensemble ICTUS, Windspiel Duo für Neue Musik, Ensemble Shockwave, and Ensemble Vortex. He was also one of the two assistant composers and the co-directors in the CHROMA XXI and XXII projects; an installation of instruments and sound objects created by Rebecca Saunders realized in October 2021.
He currently is pursuing his Ph.D. in Composition / Musicology at Graduate School Freiburg-Bern for Artistic Research. His research is focused on the Analysis/Integration of liminality in interdisciplinary composition.

Think of the sound of NIM as the host of angels in Gustave Dore’s illustrations for Dante’s Paradise – radiant and terrifying at once, spinning in a whirlpool of celestial light. This is electronic music that far transcends its material origin and becomes an ethereal entity that belongs to no particular time. Its points of attraction are equally 21st century and Renaissance, science and mysticism, neoclassical and experimental, purity and imperfection, impenetrable depth and unbearable lightness, cosmic harmony and chthonic dissonance. These references define NIM, but not completely, as there is always room for something that escapes words.

Text author: Jurij Dobriakov

noiseismessage@gmail.com

Freelance composer and Senior Lecturer in music theory at the University of Music and performing Arts Vienna

⭕️  Music saves us from utter nonsense  ⭕️
https://soundcloud.com/speculum-earlymusic
https://soundcloud.com/openmusic
https://soundcloud.com/parerga-paralipomena
https://soundcloud.com/leschantsduvent

Gear /
ANALOGUE SOLUTIONS Vostok 2020
ANALOGUE SOLUTIONS Telemark
MOOG Subharmonicon
MOOG DFAM
KORG Volca FM
NOVATION Mininova
NOVATION Supernova
ACCESS Virus TI
DAVE SMITH OB-6
ELEKTRON Machinedrum MKII
SOMA Pulsar 23
SOMA Ornament
SOMA Lyra 8
SOMA The Pipe
SOMA Cosmos
EVENTIDE Eclipse
EVENTIDE H-9
KORG SQ-1
ARTURIA Keystep pro/Beatstep pro
RED PANDA Particle
STRYMON Big Sky
MOOG MF-101
KAHAYAN Preamp 12K72

5 Ricercari for solo cello (2020)

Emircan Pehlivan