Biography

Hassan Zanjirani Farahani (BA, MA, MA) is an Iranian-Austrian composer, pianist, multi-instrumentalist, media artist and art collector based in Vienna. Born in 1987 in Qom, he attended school, music lessons and the conservatory in Qom and Tehran, commuting between the two cities as a child and teenager. He studied piano, trumpet and clarinet at the conservatory in Tehran and worked from 2006 to 2011 as a piano and music teacher and as a pianist, clarinetist and trumpeter in various orchestras, before moving to Austria in 2011.

After first studies in Vienna he completed a bachelor’s degree in composition (2015) and two Master of Arts degrees – in composition and in music and media technology (2017) – each with distinction, at the Anton Bruckner Private University Linz. His master’s thesis dealt with the technical fundamentals of stage lighting and visuals. His most important teachers include Andreas Weixler and Carola Bauckholt; he attended master classes with Beat Furrer, Tristan Murail, David Berezan and John Chowning (ORF musikprotokoll).

As a composer and live-electronics performer he has appeared at ORF musikprotokoll at steirischer herbst (Helmut List Halle, Graz, 2016), the Mantova Chamber Music Festival (Palazzo Ducale, Mantua, 2016 – listed in the Austrian Foreign Ministry’s cultural yearbook “AustriaKultur 2016”), the Ars Electronica Festival (Linz, 2016), the Vienna Konzerthaus (Schubert-Saal, 2015), Porgy & Bess (Vienna), Theater Phönix (Linz), the Ars Electronica Center (Deep Space 8K, Tanzhafen Festival 2017) and, with Carola Bauckholt’s composition class, at Wien Modern (2017). In 2014 he took part in the research and concert project “display – CEUS” with Bösendorfer’s CEUS grand piano at Klavierhaus Merta in Linz, a cooperation between the Bruckner University and Bösendorfer. In 2016 he organised an Austrian-Iranian cultural project with concerts, lectures and workshops in Tehran together with the Contemporary Music Circle of the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art.

As a guest lecturer at the Bruckner University he taught real-time audio and lighting control as well as projection and LED design for stage performance. His compositions are stylistically diverse – most are pieces for piano, ensemble and live electronics, alongside works for film, theatre, dance and music theatre. He works with stage and architectural lighting, projection, graphics, animation and visualization and has developed architectural installations in Austria, Germany, the United Arab Emirates, Turkey and Iran. In addition to his musical activities, he works as a sound engineer, sound and light designer, music producer, graphic designer and VFX artist. In 2017 he founded Luxonaria GmbH in Vienna (company register FN 474934h), an international online house for art, hand-knotted Persian rugs (Teppichbazar, BazarPort) and pianos (Musism), which he still runs as managing director.