To the Teheran-born composer Siavosh Banihashemi, who has lived and worked in Graz since 2001, timbre is a vital element in his musical language. He studied with Georg Friedrich Haas, Beat Furrer, Gerd Kühr and Gerhard Eckel and worked and performed with the SWR Symphony Orchestra, ensemble chronophonie Freiburg, Ensemble intercontemporain, Ensemble Zeitfluss, Stadler Quartet, Minguet Quartet, and with instrumentalists of Klangforum Wien, among others. He was awarded the City of Graz Promotion Prize for Music (2007), a scholarship by the Austrian Ministry of Education, Art and Culture (2009) and the National Scholarship for Composition by the Austrian Chancellery (2016).