TEHRAN-Iranian music performances were held at the University of Toronto New Music Festival (UTNMF), which is underway in Toronto, Canada.

On February 1, the festival hosted a contemporary Iranian music symposium and performance with distinguished composer Reza Vali, Mehr reported.

Vali, 74, began his music studies at the Conservatory of Music in Tehran. In 1972 he went to Austria and studied music education and composition at the Academy of Music in Vienna.

After graduating from the Academy of Music, he moved to the United States and continued his studies at the University of Pittsburgh, receiving his Ph.D. in music theory and composition in 1985. He has been a faculty member of the School of Music at Carnegie Mellon University since 1988.

He has received numerous honors and commissions, including the honor prize of the Austrian Ministry of Arts and Sciences, two Andrew W. Mellon Fellowships, commissions from the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, the Boston Modern Orchestra Project, the Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble, Kronos Quartet, the Carpe Diem String Quartet, the Seattle Chamber Players, and the Arizona Friends of Chamber Music, as well as grants from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, The Pittsburgh Foundation, and the Pittsburgh Board of Public Education.

He was selected by the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust as the Outstanding Emerging Artist for which he received the Creative Achievement Award. Vali’s orchestral compositions have been performed in the United States by the Pittsburgh Symphony, the Seattle Symphony, the Boston Modern Orchestra Project, the Baltimore Symphony, the Memphis Symphony Orchestra, and the Orchestra 2001.

His music has been performed in Europe, China, Chile, Mexico, Hong Kong, and Australia and is recorded on the Deutsche Grammophon, Naxos, New Albion, MMC, Ambassador, Albany, and ABC Classics labels.

Vali also held two composition masterclasses during the festival.

An Iranian music concert was also held at the University of Toronto New Music Festival on January 31.

The concert was curated and conducted by Kaveh Mirhosseini, with Bijan Sepanji on violin and Farzad Khorshidsavar on daf and dayereh, Mehr reported.

Mirhosseini, a DMA student at the University of Toronto, is an Iranian composer, conductor, percussionist, and researcher of Iranian folk music.

In 2012, he founded the Cantus Ensemble in Tehran and MECA (Middle Eastern Composers Association); in 2024, he founded the JAM Orchestra in Toronto.

He has played in the Tehran Symphony Orchestra (TSO) for 14 years as a principal percussionist and guest conductor of the TSO and the Iran National Symphony Orchestra in his professional career. Many different orchestras, ensembles, and soloists performed his compositions, such as the Mili Reasurans Chamber Orchestra, conducted by Hakan Sensoy (Istanbul, Turkey), Koda Orchestra, conducted by Oguzhan Kavruk (Izmir, Turkey), Annie Kosanovich (Oregon State University, the U.S.), Branka Parlic (Silk Road Music Festival, Serbia), Gokce Bahar Oytun (Istanbul, Turkey), and Respina String Quartet (Tehran Contemporary Music Festival).

He has recorded orchestral pieces by Tehran Cantus Ensemble and albums by Iranian and non-Iranian composers, such as Christos Hatzis’s “Zeitgeist” and “Winter Solstice,” Reza Vali’s “Zand,” M.R. Darvishi’s “The Lost of Truth,” Mehran Rouhani’s “For Those,” and more.

The UTNMF is an international festival of contemporary music presented annually by the University of Toronto Faculty of Music. Having launched on January 24, the festival will run until February 4.

SS/SAB