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Shervin Mirzeinali is an Iranian-Australian composer, artistic director and curator. His practice draws on spectralism, Persian musical traditions, intercultural collaboration, timbre and repetition. His recent work has focused increasingly on intercultural practice and minimalism, examining how Persian modal, rhythmic and ritual materials can interact with experimental composition, electronics and interdisciplinary performance.

Mirzeinali completed a Doctor of Musical Arts at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music, where his research examined approaches to timbre, ornamentation and structure within contemporary composition. His work often develops from what he describes as "decorative timbre": an approach in which ornament is treated not as an addition to musical structure, but as a structural and expressive element in itself. Through this method, he investigates how Persian musical gestures can be transformed and recontextualised without being reduced to stylistic quotation.

His works have been presented in concert, theatrical and installation contexts. His music theatre work Panbe Zan received the 2023 APRA AMCOS Art Music Award for Work of the Year: Dramatic. His interdisciplinary project Nazri, supported by Creative Australia, brought together Persian ritual, movement, percussion and electronics in a performance developed with artists from different cultural and disciplinary backgrounds.

Mirzeinali is the Artistic Director of the Iranian Music Festival Australia. Through these platforms, he develops performances, festivals, workshops and interdisciplinary projects that create space for Iranian, diasporic and intercultural artists. His curatorial work focuses on presenting culturally specific practices within contemporary Australian contexts while supporting collaboration between artists working across traditional, experimental and cross-cultural forms.

Alongside composition and direction, Mirzeinali has worked with performers, ensembles and independent artists to develop projects involving acoustic instruments, live electronics, improvisation and site-responsive performance. His broader artistic interests include Persian minimalism, spectral harmony, ritual-based structures and the use of sound as a means of cultural memory.

His work is shaped by the experience of migration and by an ongoing interest in how artistic practice can hold multiple musical identities at once. Rather than treating tradition and experimentation as opposing positions, he approaches them as interconnected processes through which new forms of expression can emerge.

Biography provided by the composer — current to July 2026