Zurich Orchestra Gives Voice To Composer Who Can't Leave Iran

(MENAFN- Swissinfo) Hundreds of pages of music will be interpreted in a Zurich church this month by musicians the author has never met in person. For Mehdi Rajabian, an Iranian composer barred from leaving his country, the premiere is a test of his craft: can the music he wrote under restriction resonate freely in Switzerland? This content was published on September 14, 2025 - 10:30 8 minutes Arta Barzanji

When new music by Iranian composer Mehdi Rajabian is premiered in Zurich on September 17, his presence will be restricted to the scores. They are evidence of a meticulous process – 200-300 pages prepared for this programme alone – shaped by long-distance exchanges across time zones.

Rajabian will not be present for the concert as he remains forbidden from leaving Iran under a state-imposed travel ban. This follows earlier convictions on charges including“insulting Islamic sanctities” and“propaganda against the state”, linked to his work with the underground label Barg Music.

He was also detained in 2020 over collaborations with female performers, according to Amnesty International and other rights groups. Yet the work will be performed as he composed it.“Everything is completely professional,” he tells Swissinfo via email.“But the main point to me is that music cannot be censored and can reach audiences thousands of miles away in another world.”

>> Murmur of the Naked Gun is one of the tracks on Rajabian's 2021 album Coup of Gods :

External Content

The concertExternal link , hosted by the Zurich University of the Arts (ZHdK) at Neumünster Church in Zurich, grew from a chance introduction. Swiss pianist and composer Martin Villiger introduced Rajabian to André Bellmont, a Swiss conductor and composer at ZHdK. From their friendship a plan emerged.

What began as a suggestion of a small performance became an entire evening devoted to Rajabian's music, with complementary pieces that echo its themes. From there, logistics became an exercise in trust: scores and notes moving out of Tehran, rehearsal clips and questions coming back.“This performance would definitely have been impossible without André,” Rajabian says, praising Bellmont's organisation and the care of the ZHdK team.

The Iranian composer, born in 1989, was imprisoned in 2013, 2015, and 2020. Since then he's been forbidden to leave Iran. Mehdi Rajabian Fame beyond the ban

Rajabian's path helps explain the stakes. He was born in 1989 in Sari, near the Caspian Sea, and his work is often a conversation between Persian modes – a melodic system in Persian classical music – and poetry, with Western ensembles.

Over the past decade he has faced arrest and a travel ban in Iran, yet he has continued to compose and participate in international collaborations. He is known for large-scale scoring – hundreds of pages for orchestral arrangements – and for working with internationally renowned artists, including collaborators who had little prior contact with Iranian music.

His recordings are available on major streaming platforms, and he recently created teaser music for Mercedes-Benz that was published on the brand's official channels and bestowed with two Telly Awards, an international award which prizes works created for television and video.

What matters to him in Zurich is not only that a concert is taking place, but that the story around it doesn't flatten his identity into a single headline.“It is always important to me that prison and bans do not overcome my art,” he writes.“I have worked with musicians in the world who I can say had never heard of Iranian music before me, and all of them have won Grammy awards many times, with large orchestras for which I have written more than 400 pages of scores.”

His point is clear: the constraints he lives with are real, but the work is rigorous, specialised and ambitious. Zurich, he suggests, should be understood first as a musical event – one built page by page, part by part.

Swiss conductor André Bellmont (left) during rehearsals of the“Forbidden Music” concert, in Zurich. Soeren-Funk Less fusion, more dialogue

The programme's title hints at that balance. Forbidden Music gestures to the pressures that have shadowed Rajabian's career, but the evening itself is rooted in craft: new arrangements prepared with Swiss colleagues, rehearsed under Bellmont's baton, and shaped for the acoustics of a resonant church.

“For me, the combination of Eastern and Western music is fascinating, both musically and culturally,” he says.“Art is alive with cultural differences.” The promise is less about fusion as a slogan and more about dialogue: Persian modes and textures set in conversation with a European ensemble, all under the eye of a composer who doesn't care about borders.

There was no grand plan, Rajabian says. Once the decision was made, the Swiss side took on the mechanics – venues, players, schedules – while he focused on the material.“All this mutual aid will be clear to the audience in the concert.” He describes a web of connections across Switzerland, from ZHdK to artists linked to Geneva's international community.

>> Listen to Rajabian's An Epitaph on the Tomb of Companions, from Coup of Gods:

External Content Trumpet for justice

Rajabian resists any framing that pulls his music away from the emotions that first made him compose. He has long said that his work is driven by truth-telling.“I am a composer who did not just produce music, and my whole effort was to spread the truth and human rights through artistic language,” he writes.

The experiences that have marked his adulthood – arrests, bans, long stretches of uncertainty – are not erased in Zurich; they resurface as an attitude towards what music can be.“One of the effects of prison is that you cannot easily ignore the events around you and remain indifferent,” he says.“The instruments in your hands trumpet for justice and truth. Whatever you may call 'artistic entertainment' for me is a joke.”

At the same time, he is wary of over-explaining. In a striking passage of our interview, Rajabian questions whether words still carry the weight we ask of them.“I believe that words no longer have the power to convey emotion as they once did, and that humanity has seen with its own eyes everything it was not supposed to see,” he writes.

“I prefer not to say much and see how the audience feels when they hear my music. We've said everything we needed to say over the years. Let the audience freely decide what they want to take away from my music.” It's a reminder that, for him, meaning lives in sound – in choices about pace and colour, in how a line blooms in a live space.

Zurich is not a detour from Rajabian's musical life; it is an extension of it, and the Swiss stage assumes a meaning beyond any symbolism. Rajabian has never been able to give a concert in Iran and has been barred from travel for years.

“That audience that night will listen to pieces that have passed censorship and are being performed in the free world. All those who censored me will understand that no music can be banned,” he says.“One day it will pass through the restrictions and reach the ears of the whole world.”

Moving on, with hope

Rajabian will experience the premiere at a distance.“I might be able to watch the concert remotely online, if the internet speed inside Iran is good – lately it has become very slow,” he says. If a live connection proves difficult, he expects to piece the night together from rehearsal clips, messages and recordings: to hear how the new arrangements landed and what the players and audience felt in the room.

The future is already on his desk. Rajabian says he is trying to complete a new album, his first since 2022. Progress is slow under current conditions, but he is pushing on. Besides the teaser music for Mercedes-Benz, his catalogue is easy to find.“All my tracks are available on music platforms,” he says, including pieces linked to the works heard in the concert.

If there's a single word he wants Swiss listeners to carry home after the premiere, it is hope. Not a naive hope, but a durable one – the kind you can hold on to on bad days.“There is no choice but to stand still,” he wrote earlier this year.“Hope is my only asset these days.”

Edited by Virginie Mangin & Eduardo Simantob/ts

Popular Stories More Swiss private bank vaults house CHF3.4 trillion Read more: Swiss private bank vaults house CHF3.4 trillio

MENAFN14092025000210011054ID1110059481