Matin Peymani

Matin Peymani’s musical path began with lived experience.

He began his musical life in the late 1990s through the practice of performance, studying tar and setar within the living tradition of Iranian classical music.
His early training took place under the guidance of master musicians such as Mohammadreza Lotfi, Houshang Zarif, Keyvan Saket, Ataollah Jangouk, and Behrooz Hemmati.
This period was not just about acquiring technique; it involved the transmission of listening, phrasing, and an embodied relationship between sound and the body.

Between 2006 and 2010, Peymani emerged as a recognized solo performer at major national festivals in Iran.
He received First Prize at the Tehran Soloists Festival (2006),
was awarded Best Tar Soloist at the Iranian National Youth Festival (2008),
and Best Setar Soloist at the same festival in 2010.

From the early 2010s onward, his work entered a broader phase, combining performance with composition across multiple formats and ensembles.
Works such as Shoor-e Bolbolan (2012), Paikooban (2013), Javidan and Dast Afshaan (2014), and Tolo (The Sunrise) (2015)  and Haft Eqlims of Tar and the Orchestra (2016 ) reflect his early efforts to integrate Iranian instruments with canonical western texture and orchestral structures.
During this period, he also performed extensively across Asia, the Middle East, and Europe.

Parallel to his artistic practice, Peymani began teaching in 2013, focusing on Iranian music structure and history at the Bahá’í Institute of Higher Education (BIHE), while also giving lectures and classes in Tehran.
This phase coincided with sustained research activity, including the publication of the book Eighth System – Dastgah (2017), which offers an analytical investigation of texture, structure, and extended modal systems in Iranian music, as well as an article on irony in Iranian ritual regional music (2019).

His formal academic education began deliberately later, in his third decade of life.
In 2018, he entered the V. Sarajishvili Tbilisi State Conservatoire, completing a Bachelor’s degree in Composition and Music Theory.
There, he studied composition with Maka Virsaladze and Eka Chabashvili, combining a conceptual understanding of sound as a musical subject with structured training in Western compositional techniques, including form, counterpoint, harmony, and orchestration.
This phase did not mark the beginning of his music, but rather the articulation and stabilization of knowledge that had already been formed through experience. These years culminated in a body of work that includes several chamber music pieces, a symphonic poem composed for the Georgian Philharmonic Orchestra, and an album of Preludes and Fugues for prepared piano—works that crystallize the integration of experiential knowledge with formal compositional structures.

In 2024, Peymani completed his Master of Arts in Composition at the Royal Danish Academy of Music (RDAM) in Copenhagen.
During this period, his work focused intensively on experimental music,  microtonal music, tuning systems, spectral music, electroacoustic composition, and spectromorphology.
He worked with composers such as Bent Sørensen, Jeppe Just Christensen, Simon Løffler, and Hans Peter Stubbe Teglbjærg, developing a heightened sensitivity to texture, timbre, silence, and unstable formal processes. His master’s thesis centered on the concept of organic composition, investigating form as an emergent process shaped by internal sonic forces rather than predefined structural schemes.

His engagement with Scandinavian spectral traditions continued through collaboration and study with Lasse Thoresen in Norway, where spectral listening, tuning systems, and the relationship between sound and motion became central components of his compositional thinking.

From this point onward, Peymani’s international activity expanded significantly.
He received commissions from ensembles and festivals including Tallā Rouge (Juilliard), the DKDM Symphony Orchestra, Euregio Klassika, Pulsar Festival, Unmute Festival, and the Ligeti String Quartet and etc.
His output spans a wide range of formats—orchestal, chamber, solo, electroacoustic, and multi-channel works—moving fluidly between eastern music, contemporary experimental, electroacoustics ,electronics and spectral practices.
This diversity is an attempt to preserve and reactivate sonic qualities in contexts where each stands on the verge of disappearance.

In recent years, his work has been recognized with multiple international awards, including prizes from the DONNE in MUSICA Festival, Euregio Klassika, Global Music Awards, and Vox Novus.

Today, Matin Peymani lives and works in Copenhagen.
He composes, performs, teaches, and researches simultaneously— as an accumulation of times.
His practice continually moves from experience to theory and returns from knowledge to sound, maintaining a dynamic dialogue between lived listening and structured reflection.

Alongside his compositional and pedagogical work, Peymani is actively engaged in building artistic and cultural platforms.
He is the founder of Copenhagen Microtonal Community, an initiative dedicated to the exploration and dissemination of microtonal music, fostering collaboration among composers, performers, and researchers.
He is also the founder of Global Art Copenhagen, a cultural platform aimed at creating cross-disciplinary and cross-cultural artistic exchange.

Peymani is a member of the Danish Composers’ Association and Koda Kultur, and is affiliated with the Danish Arts Foundation.
These activities reflect his commitment not only to artistic production, but also to shaping the institutional and communal conditions through which contemporary music is created, shared, and sustained.