Mehdi Hosseini

Mehdi Hosseini
Background information
Born (1979-07-10) 10 July 1979 (age 47)
OriginTehran, Iran
Genres21st-century classical music, Contemporary classical music, Persian symphonic music, Experimental music, Electroacoustic music
Occupationcomposer
Websitewww.monodies.com

Seyedmehdi Hosseini Bami (born July 10, 1979; Persian: سید مهدی حسینی بمی) is a Persian composer of contemporary classical music.

Biography

Hosseini was born in Tehran, Iran, and received his master's degree and Doctor of Music degree (DMA) in Composition from Saint Petersburg State Conservatory, named after N. A. Rimsky-Korsakov. His major teachers include Farhad Fakhreddini, Prof. Alexander Minatsakanian, Prof. Nigel Osborne and Prof. Sergei Slonimsky in composition, and Professor Tatiana Bershadskaya in Musicology. His early musical experiences included from 1998–2001, where he studying music theory, Persian music and composition with Farhad Fakhreddini in Tehran. Hosseini then entered the Saint Petersburg State Conservatory in 2001 where he under the guidance of Prof. Tatiana Bershadskaya studied musicology and composition with Prof. Mnatsakanian and continued postgraduate course with the composer Sergei Slonimsky. Mehdi Hosseini completed a composition course from the University of Music and Performing Arts, Vienna in 2007 during the summer courses at Mürzzuschlag, Austria where he studied with Nigel Osborne.

Hosseini’s compositions include works for large orchestra, chamber orchestra, and various ensembles and has been performed and recorded by orchestras and ensembles such as the St. Petersburg State Philharmonic Symphony Orchestra, the Saint Petersburg Academic Symphony Orchestra, Symphony Orchestra of the Opera and Ballet Theatre of the St. Petersburg State Conservatory, North-Ossetian State Symphony Orchestra, Ensemble intercontemporain, Namascae, Lemanic Modern Ensemble, PluralEnsemble, Ensemble Proton Bern, Studio for New Music Ensemble, Moscow Contemporary Music Ensemble, GAMEnsemble and more. His works have been published by the Compozitor Publishing House (Russia), and Donemus (Netherlands).

In the last few years, He was the focus of attention in Russia as a composer. and his works are performed during such festivals as St. Petersburg Musical Spring, Contemporary East and West, Contemporary Past, A Reverse Perspective, Trajectories of Petersburg Avant-Garde, Sound Ways, Moscow Autumn, Moscow Actual Music Festival “Another Space” and others. His music is played in Mariinsky Theatre, Saint Petersburg and Moscow Conservatories, Saint Petersburg and Moscow Philharmonics.

Mehdi Hosseini has made a substantial contribution to the cultural landscape of St. Petersburg and to the development of contemporary music in Russia. He founded the St. Petersburg Contemporary Music Center reMusik.org in 2011, which subsequently launched the St. Petersburg International New Music Festival (2013) along with its educational programs and online academy. In 2023, he established the contemporary music ensemble Répons, further supporting new music performance and artistic innovation in the region.

In 2025, Hosseini expanded his international initiatives by creating the International eLearning Institute for New Music (ILINM), launched in Switzerland. As the initiator and creator of ILINM, he serves as its CEO and Artistic Director, providing an online environment for advanced study in contemporary music and creative exchange


Compositions

Hosseini's music and aesthetic style combine his work as a composer with his research background as an ethnomusicologist and music theorist. He has composed symphonic, ensemble, and chamber music works across a wide range of performance mediums, with a catalog that exhibits a monodic orientation integrated into a personal musical language.

He utilizes "Monodies" both as a title for individual compositions and as a conceptual framework that extends historical monody into a contemporary compositional and analytical system. Within this system, single-voice structures function as self-organizing principles adaptable to diverse musical textures and multidimensional sound worlds. His creative practice involves a structural inquiry into non-Western art music traditions, integrating the structural architectures of the Persian dastgāh, the Arabic maqam, and the Indian raga, alongside regional folk music traditions of Asia.

While these theoretical models inform his conceptual approach, his compositions are primarily rooted in Iranian regional folk music (musiqi-ye nawahi) and the Iranian musical system. In recent works, such as Hesar for symphony orchestra and Ctesiphon for cello, his musical textures and conceptual frameworks are structurally influenced by historical Iranian architecture.


List of works

Mehdi Hosseini at the 4th Hangzhou Contemporary Music Festival
Mehdi Hosseini's Concerto for String Quartet and Chamber Orchestra
Inertia is a 2014 chamber music composition by Iranian composer Mehdi Hosseini, scored for clarinet/bass clarinet, piano, violin, and cello. Recorded by Ensemble proton bern (Switzerland)

Awards

Footnotes

  1. ↑ Tehran Times Art Desk: "Persian composer Hosseini to perform Baluchi concerto in Russia." Tehran Times. Jun 8, 2009.
  2. ↑ "Works of Iranian composer to echo in St. Petersburg." Archived 2013-02-17 at the Wayback Machine IRIB - English Radio. April 5, 2010.
  3. ↑ Mehr News.
  4. ↑ "Russia to Present Piece by Iranian Composer." Jame Jam, April 5, 2010.
  5. ↑ Irandaily | No. 3647 | Art & Culture | Page 12 "Mehdi Hosseini will be presented during two performances in St. Petersburg in April and May." Iran Daily. April 6, 2010.
  6. ↑ Payvand Iran News
  7. ↑ http://www.persianweekly.co.uk | No. 142 | Culture | Page 7 Persian Weekly.
  8. ↑ Газета "Коммерсантъ С-Петербург", №115 (4415), 30.06.2010. Kommersant Newspaper, Jun 2010.
  9. ↑ Art-Modern FOUNDATION.
  10. ↑ II International Music festival “Contemporary Past”. American Music, a XX Century. 23-27 Jun, Saint Petersburg.
  11. ↑ "Kurdish work of Persian composer presented in Russia." Payvand Iran News. October 10, 2009.
  12. ↑ "Iranian Composer Mehdi Hosseini's Pause at Sound Ways festival.". October 10, 2009.
  13. ↑ "VI Санкт-Петербургский международный фестиваль новой музыки reMusik.org" Коммерсантъ. 29 апреля 2019.
  14. ↑ " Mehdi Hosseini's "Monodies" in concert Post Scriptum" Payvand Iran News. February 23, 2012.
  15. ↑ "City Alive with the Sound of reMusik.org" The St. Petersburg Times. May 22, 2013 (Issue # 1760)
  16. ↑ "Composer Brings Persian Influence to St. Pete" The Moscow Times Aug. 15, 2012, 2025.
  17. ↑ "В Петербурге пройдет международный фестиваль новой музыки" TASS Russian News Agency 23 May 2025.
  18. ↑ "International eLearning Institute for New Music" December 9, 2025.

References

See also