Instruments: Tar, Dotar, Kamancheh, and Barbat
Biography:

Homayoon Beigi is the director and a composer at Noavaran Ensemble, a co-founder of Artists for Peace, and artistic advisor to the Artsee Community. He has been conducting research in acoustics for over 34 years and has studied and taught the physics of sound at Columbia University for over 30 years. He also studied music theory with the late Maestro Gregory H. Aslani, along with collaborations with that G.H. Aslani in the composition of a fusion work with three incarnations, featuring the contemporary composition of G.H. Aslani and Homayoon's Persian compositions and arrangement in Chahargah and Shur. Homayoon has been working on the theory and practice of introducing 24-tet microtonal harmony to melodies derived from the Persian classical repertoire. He has delivered invited lectures for Artists for Peace on his research on ethnomusicology, available at the Noavran Ensemble youtube channel.

He studied the Persian Kamancheh with the late maestro, Andranik Aroustamian, from 1983 to 1993. From 1993 to 1995 he studied the classical Persian etudes of Mirza Abdollah for the Tar under Reza Derakhshani. He has also self-studied the Persian Dotar in the style of late Maestro Haj Ghorban Soleimani since 1996. He has performed in many Persian classical and fusion venues including several appearances at Columbia University, Adalphi University, Symphonyspace, IBM T.J. Watson Research Center, and the Bowery Poetry Club. His fusion work has involved Persian classical music with North Indian (Hindustani) Music (Tar and Dotar with Sitar and Tabla), South Indian (Carnatic) Music (Kamancheh with Mridangam and Voice), Persian popular oldies (Tar with Voice) and Contemporary American Music (e.g., George Gershwin on Tar with Voice), in collaboration with the American Suprano Singer, Monika Jalili.

In 1995 and 1996 he won two consecutive Adventurous System and Software Research awards, while working at IBM Research, for the development of a paper-like interface using a tablet PC for entering and editing musical notation on a computer, utilizing pen-gestures and handwriting recognition technology. Dr. Beigi earned his BS (1984), MS (1985), and PhD (1991) from the mechanical engineering department of Columbia University. He worked at IBM TJ Watson Research Center for ten years (1991-2001) and since 2001 he has been the President of Recognition Technologies, Inc., conducting research on Speaker, Face, and speech Recognition. He was an adjunct professor in the departments of Computer Science, Mechanical Engineering, and Electrical Engineering and has supervised PhD students in Civil Engineering at Columbia University from 1995 to 2024 and is currently a Professor of Professional Practice in both of Mechanical Engineering and Electrical Engineering departments of Columbia University.