Hooshyar Khayam (b. 1978) is an Iranian musician. He is active as a composer, conductor, pianist, producer, and educator.
Halfway between the musical heritage of the East and the West, Khayam’s music blends the influence of styles and music of extreme sources into a new merged musical composition.
Khayam is the son of the Iranian writer Masoud Khayam and the painter Pariyoush Ganji. He grew up in Tehran during the Iran-Iraq War, which lasted for eight years and caused his family to evacuate multiple times and undergo short-term migrations in his early years.
He was a finalist in the Queen Elisabeth International Composition Competition (2013), the first prize winner of the Franz Schubert and Modern Music International Composition Competition (2011), a finalist in the Mauricio Kagel International Composition Competition (2013), and his work was selected as one of the “Top of the World Albums” by Songlines (2011, 2020).
Khayam’s music has been performed by the Kronos Quartet, Lake Superior Chamber Orchestra, Thirteen Strings, Ukraine Philharmonic Orchestra, Moscow Virtuosi Strings, Nilper Orchestra, Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, Tehran Philharmonic Orchestra, and by individual artists such as Stephen Prutsman, Artur Avanesov, Hossein Alizadeh, Anja Lechner, Aram Talalyan, Lara Downes, Todd Palmer, Szofia Boros, Golfam Khayam, Mona Matbou Riahi, Elina Bertina, Wayne Foster-Smith, Eva-Christina Schonweiss, Kirsten Ecke, Burghard Toelke, Klara Ausserhuber, Raphael Weinroth-Browne, Morrison Trio, and Shahrzad Ensemble, among others.
His music has been performed at NPR Tiny Desk, Lincoln Center, Spoleto Festival, BOZAR Theater Brussels, Guggenheim, MOMA, Stefanie Saal Graz, Konzertverein Ingolstadt, Vortex Jazz London, Steinway Society San Francisco, University of Cambridge, University of London, and various concerts and performances in cities such as Moscow, Tbilisi, Kyiv, Riga, London, Berlin, New York, Charleston, Florence, Graz, Linz, Yerevan, Montreal, Ottawa, and Tehran.
In 2015, Khayam became the first Iranian composer living in Iran to be commissioned by an American professional orchestra to write music. The result was a two-act ballet titled “Kalileh,” based on the ancient Persian fables of Kalileh va Dimneh and the poetry of Rumi and Saadi.
Before establishing his own label, Khayam worked with Hermes Records and a few other publications on solo and collaborative albums. In 2015, he founded his label, Tehran Records, to produce and promote contemporary Iranian music. The label was active between 2015 and 2020, introducing works by recording artists, composers, and improvisation artists, and collaborating with painters, visual artists, graphic designers, sculptors, photographers, poets, and writers. The label ceased its activities after the shooting down of Ukrainian passenger Flight 752 on January 8, 2020. The last publication of Tehran Records was a single track titled “NOOR” (Persian for “Light”) by Soheil Mokhberi and Hooshyar Khayam, accompanied by a video by Dariush Gorgvand, released as a lament for the 176 passengers who lost their lives on that flight.
Khayam has studied at Université de Montreal, University of Cincinnati, Hochschule für Musik Hanns Eisler Berlin, Trinity College London, and Arts University Tehran.
In 2020, Khayam moved to Canada. Since 2022, he has been working as an instructor and Artist in Residence at Carleton University in Ottawa. He is currently the Music Specialist at the OMS Montessori School in Ottawa.