Alireza Mashayekhi was born in Tehran, Iran, in 1940. He is one of the first Iranian composers who has pioneered modern music in Iran. Mashayekhi's works to have been performed in Iran and abroad for more than 35 years. His first teachers in Iran were the deceased Dr. Lotfollah Mofakham Payan (Iranian music), the late Hossein Nasehi (Composition) and Ophelia Kombajian (Piano). Hanns Jelinek and Karl Schiske were his composition teachers in Vienna. His acquaintance with Hanns Jelinek encouraged him to explore a widespectrum of 20th century music. This and his fondness of Iranian culture were the cornerstones of his artistic development. After in Vienna, he went to Utrecht, the Netherlands, to pursue his study of electronics and computer music, which included attending lectures by Gottfried Michael Konig.
Mashayekhi believes that composers of our times should create music in a wide range of styles. His own compositions have tended towards two major directions: pieces that are directly inspired by Iranian music (e.g. Symphony no. 5, Persian Suite, and Sheherazade) and those compositions that are not directly related to Iranian music (e.g. Symphony no. 6, Concerto for Violin and Orchestra, Sonata for Piano).
Alireza Mashayekhi, who has his own philosophical thesis in music, believes that we can discover truth only through multilogical structures of artistic thought, this being the only way we can encompass the contradictions that "truth" carries in itself. He argues that by abandoning sequential problem-solving that has indisputably dominated "logic," especially since Newton, we are able to pursue simultaneously a number of X's. He therefore calls his own way of structuring music the "quest for meta-X." He introduces this kind of search in the following pieces: Symposium, String Quartet III, Symphony No. 8 and Celebration for Piano and Percussion. ...