Ashkan Behzadi

Ashkan Behzadi (b.1983), an Iranian–Canadian composer, earned his DMA in composition at Columbia University where he studied with Fred Lerdahl, George Lewis, and Georg Friedrich Haas. Prior to this, he graduated from McGill University where he finished his bachelor’s degree in composition and music theory. Ashkan also has a bachelor's degree in architecture from Tehran University. Ashkan’s music has been commissioned and performed by various international ensembles, including TAK Ensemble, Oerknal Ensemble, JACK Quartet, Divertimento Ensemble, Ensemble Alternance, and featured at such festivals and concert series as Dialoge Festival at Stiftung Mozarteum Salzburg, Rondo 2017 in Milan, and Manifeste 2014 at IRCAM. 
For the 2019–2020 academic year, Ashkan joined the Department of Music of the University of Chicago as a Postdoctoral Researcher in the Chicago Center for Contemporary Composition. Ashkan Behzadi is currently teaching at Columbia university as a lecturer in discipline and has been named a 2021-2022 Guggenheim Fellow in composition.