Karen Keyhani (b.1979) belongs to the new movement of contemporary music in Iran; a movement that has its roots as much in the Persian classical music as in Western contemporary classical music. As a composer and Santour player Karen has been inspired by contemporary and classical poetry as well as traditional music.
Karen’s music covers a wide range of contemporary classical and Persian traditional music, collaborative improvisation, music for theatre, performance art and children’s musical theatre. His music has been commissioned, performed and recorded by several ensembles and orchestras such as Tehran Symphonic Orchestra, Iran National Orchestra, Musikfabrik (Cologne), Proton (Bern), Divertimento (Milan), MAM (Cologne-Berlin), Matka (Geneva), Mise-en (NYC), Nivak ensemble (Tehran), and soloists such as Bridget Kibbey (NYC), Elise Jacoberger (Bern), Layla Ramezan (Lausanne), Rocco Rescigno (Trieste), and Martina Rudic (Milan) among others. During recent years, he has released seven solo and collaborative albums in Iran and the United States and his scores have been published by Mahoor Institute of Culture and Arts in Tehran.
Karen was selected in 2013 by République et canton de Genève and EOFA (Embassy of Foreign Artists, Geneva) as composer in residence for a joint project with MATKA ensemble of contemporary music.
In October 2016, Karen’s piece As Far As Possible for santour and ensemble was selected and performed in the 60th Venice Biennale of Contemporary Music by Divertimento Ensemble conducted by Sandro Gorli.
His two albums Only That Spark and Nothing More and Garden of Leaflessness were, in turn, the finalist and the winner of the Barbad Award for the best Iranian contemporary music album in the 32nd and 33rd Fajr Music Festival.
Karen is a lecturer in composition, orchestration, and contemporary music notation in Tehran University of Art as well as The University of Tehran, and teaches history of western music in Tehran Music Technical High School for Girls. He has also presented a number of seminars and master classes on Persian classical music and microtonal music in HEM (Geneva music university), GMTH seminar of music theory (Switzerland), Verdi Conservatory (Mian), Hochschule für Musik und Tanz (Cologne), Bilkent University (Turkey), and ISI (Indonesia) etc.