Ramin Roshandel’s compositional work is based around incorporating ‘experience’ as a fundamental concept through a non-experimental approach in performance. Considering phenomena such as instability, cultural identity, and communicational language on one hand, and being inspired by Iranian music microtones as a setār (an Iranian instrument) player on the other, has led him to consider indeterminate, improvisatory, and abstract structures in his music to contrast or converge with post- or non-tonal forms.

Roshandel has performed as a setār soloist in the premiere of Jean-François Charles’ opera, Grant Wood in Paris. Additionally, he was awarded a 2019 University of Iowa Digital Scholarship and Publishing Studio summer scholarship and is a New Music on the Point alumnus. His pieces have been performed by The JACK quartet and LIGAMENT, as well as at the Midwest Composers Symposium (MCS) and the Exchange of Midwest Collegiate Composers (EMCC).

He is currently in his third year as a doctoral student in the Composition program at the University of Iowa, where he has studied under Josh Levine and Sivan Cohen-Elias and currently working with David Gompper. He holds a Master of Arts degree in Music Composition from the University of Tehran and a Bachelor of Arts in Iranian Music Performance from Tehran University of Art.

His articles on Hossein Alizadeh’s Neynavā and Elliott Carter’s Dialogues have been published in Persian journals.