Composer Shahrokh Khajenouri has been a dedicated composer of electronic music since the 1970s. More than two-thirds of his ouevre directly or indirectly involves electronic and computer music, often featuring the technologies that every decade has had to offer. His electronic sound world generally includes abstract representations of his native Iranian folk music using either processed recordings or combinations of these materials with live instrumental music.
Shahrokh Khajenouri’s curiosity about new musical possibilities motivated him to explore electronic music with Michael Groubert at the Morley College of London in the 1970s. At the time, he was a music composition student at the London Academy of music. Khajenouri’s experiments with musique concrète techniques and analog synthesizers, especially the VCS3, culminated in two major works: Three Movements for Concrète Electronic Music (1978) and Life and Death of VCS3 (1980).
After the Revolution, Khajenouri returned to Iran, but a lack of equipment led him to concentrate on acoustic composition. Fortunately, as computer music software became available, he was soon able to return to his electronic endeavors. A major work from this period, Dialogue for Flute and Electronic Music (1997) was the first in a series of works for acoustical instruments and computer music. It emerged out of a collaboration with virtuoso Iranian flutist, Dr. Azin Movahed. Soon after, in 2003, Khajenouri initiated a series of solo electronic music shows in Tehran, with different instruments, tape loops and computer controlled electronic sounds and live processing. These works were performed in the Niavaran hall in Tehran, a former ex-Shah residency, now officially a suitable concert hall. A 2005 residency at Bremen University of Music’s Neu Atelier für Musik computer music studios resulted in Voyage of Dena (2005) for eleven musicians and live electronics. The success of this work led to the commissioning of two works that were shown in 2007, Fracktuna for saxophone, piano, percussions, guitar and electronics, and Memorial, a sound installation, exhibited in Syke, Germany.