Kiya Tabassian

Kiya Tabassian was born in 1976, in Tehran, Iran, immigrating to Montreal in 1990. He has been trained in Persian music under Reza Ghasemi and Kayhan Kalhor. He studied musical composition at the Conservatoire de musique de Montréal with Gilles Tremblay.
In 1998, he co-founded Constantinople, a Montreal based ensemble, which has earned an international reputation for its unique juxtaposition of early musical sources and the living traditions of the Middle East. He has recorded 11 CDs for the Atma and Analekta labels and has created with Constantinople over 35 original programs performing them at some of the most prestigious festivals and venues such as Salle Pleyel (Paris), Festival d'Aix-en-Provence (France), Festival de Musiques Sacrées de Fès (Morocco), Festival d'Ile de France (Paris), Festival Stimmen (Germany), Festival de Mexico en el Centro Historico (Mexico), Schwetzinger SWR Festival (Germany) and Vancouver Summer Festival (Canada). Over the past decade, he has staged near 400 concerts in 91 cities in 20 different countries.
From 2002 to 2005, he was involved in the international Medi Muses research project on the history and repertoire of Mediterranean and Middle-Eastern music lands in several publishing and recording projects. As part of Medi Muses, he has published several articles on the music of Iran during the Safavid court and recorded a CD compiling the work of Abolhassan Saba together with Hossein Omoumi. Numerous musical groups and institutions have called upon his talents as a composer, including the Nouvel Ensemble Moderne and the Union Européenne de Radio-Télévision. He has also composed music for documentary and feature films, including Jabaroot and Voices of the Unheard.
From 2005 to 2011, he was a member of the Conseil des arts de Montréal and the Chairman of the Music Committee for three years. His artistic research and creations have received the support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec.