Radio 3 - New Generation Artists

Mahan Esfahani (2008-2010)

Mahan Esfahani talks about being a member of the New Generation Artists scheme.

Biography

The Iranian-born early keyboards specialist and BBC New Generation Artist Mahan Esfahani (b. 1984) is quickly gaining wide international attention for his technical prowess and musical sensitivity as an active concert harpsichordist, concerto soloist, and collaborative artist. He has appeared on the concert circuit with such ensembles as Il Complesso Barocco (dir. Alan Curtis), the Seattle Baroque Orchestra, the St. Lawrence String Quartet, and the King's Noyse; praised for his 'sensitivity and vibrance' (Early Music Today) and for possessing 'the virtuosity of a master' (Keyboard Magazine), he has delighted audiences in such series and festivals as the Tage Alter Musik Regensburg, the Goettingen Handel Festival, the Halle Handel Festival, the Settimana Mozart of Milan, the Festwoche Herrenhausen of Hannover, the Collection of Musical Instruments at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Fondazione Giorgio Cini of Venice, the Montisi Festival, Milan's Basilica di San Marco, the Berkeley Early Music Festival, the San Francisco Early Music Society, Los Angeles' Da Camera Society, Gotham Early Music at New York's Times Center, and many other concert seasons both in the U.S. and Europe. He will be making his Wigmore Hall debut as concerto soloist with The English Concert in the 2008-09 season.

Mahan Esfahani studied Musicology and Theory as a President's Scholar at Stanford University (USA), where he received honours and distinction upon submitting his B.A. thesis on 'Johann Simon Mayr's Ginevra di Scozia (1801) and the Classical Aesthetic in Early Nineteenth-Century Italian Opera Seria.' Principal studies have been under the supervision of the American musicologist George Houle (Stanford), the Australian harpsichordist Peter Watchorn (Boston), and the Italian organist Lorenzo Ghielmi (Milan). Future projects, in addition to a heavy schedule of international performing, include further work on a record project for the Musica Omnia label encompassing the works for harpsichord and organ of the Elizabethan 'Liszt of the Virginalists,' John Bull, and, as a BBC NGA, numerous BBC Radio 3 broadcasts and recitals across the United Kingdom. He has also recorded as a solo organist for Naxos.

The recipient of numerous awards for his artistry and scholarship, he was awarded the 2006 Legacy Prize of the Washington D.C.-based Creativity Foundation, and is one of the youngest instrument soloists to ever appear with a major European baroque orchestra. In the autumn of 2008, he was appointed to a three-year term as Artist-in-Residence and Junior Research Fellow at New College, Oxford, and in February of 2009 was honoured with a fellowship award of the Borletti-Buitoni Trust.

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