ListN Up playlists are commissioned by American Composers Forum. Artists are selected by ACF staff (including I CARE IF YOU LISTEN and innova Recordings).
Badie Khaleghian, an Iranian-American composer and multimedia artist based in Southern Maine, blends sound, visual art, and technology in his creative practice. Drawing inspiration from his Iranian heritage, interdisciplinary collaborations, and the exploration of sensory experiences, Badie crafts immersive worlds. His work intertwines elements of experimental and electronic music, interactive media, science, and technology, inviting audiences into unique, multisensory journeys.
Hi, I’m Badie Khaleghian, a composer and multimedia artist. For this playlist, I’ve gathered pieces that have shaped who I am as an artist. These works aren’t connected by genre or era, but by something more internal: a sense of breath, organic motion, and sonic identity. What links them is a blend of two sensibilities: a kind of fluidity—music that unfolds without confinement, guided more by intuition than structure—and the timbres and intonations I grew up with, which continue to inform how I listen and create.
This is music that breathes on its own terms—where time is flexible, gestures unfold unpredictably, and the act of playing becomes an extension of listening. Some of these pieces draw from traditions where rhythm isn’t measured, but the music is structured by the shape of the breath, the texture of the voice, or the weight of a gesture. Several pieces also carry threads of Iranian musical heritage, (I was born in Iran), not just through modes or melody, but through a deeper sensibility: an attention to microtonal nuance, a fluid approach to phrasing, and an emphasis on ornamentation and timbre as expressive tools.
In this playlist, you’ll hear works by Raven Chacon, Pauline Oliveros, Reza Vali, Kurt Stallmann, and the Shanbehzadeh Ensemble. And alongside these, I’ve included two of my own compositions and a piece by my trio, Hold Your Ears. Thank you and I hope you enjoy this selection.
American Ledger No. 1 by Raven Chacon
I had the chance to perform this piece in Houston in 2022, with Chacon present. His approach redefines authorship—the score serves as a prompt, not prescription, inviting performers to shape the experience. Time flexes, breathes, and varies wildly across performances. The piece carries weight—not just sonically, but politically. It resists fixity, inviting each interpreter to engage deeply with place, history, and sound. It’s a map that demands you choose your own path.
Lear by Pauline Oliveros
Pauline’s ideas around Deep Listening have shaped how I hear, how I compose, and how I exist in relation to sound. Lear is a piece that doesn’t unfold linearly; it hovers, surrounds. The porousness of tone and space creates a tactile, immersive listening. What moves me most is the sonic blending: how players absorb each other’s tones, shape them, and vanish into the ensemble.
Persian Folk Songs: “The Girl From Shiraz” & “Love Drunk” by Reza Vali, Performed by Kian Soltani and Aaron Pilsan
These are melodies I grew up with, but Vali transforms them. “The Girl From Shiraz” originally has a fixed pulse, yet here it drifts, unanchored, revealing a different emotional core. His use of Persian ornamentation and phrasing feels intuitive, not decorative. These pieces sit between tradition and invention, memory and reinvention. They remind me that time in Iranian music is more often carved by inflection and tone than by meter. It’s rhythm without measurement.
Traditional Music from South Iran Performed by Shanbehzadeh Ensemble
The music of the Shanbehzadeh Ensemble feels elemental. It’s not about harmonic progressions or formal development—it’s about breath, weight, friction. Timbre does the heavy lifting. Their approach to rhythm is lived and danced, not counted. It feels like the body remembering something the mind forgot. There’s a rawness in their sound that speaks to ancestry, migration, and resistance. It’s Iranian music unfiltered, more coastal, more percussive, more ecstatic. It has deeply shaped how I listen.
Open Air by Kurt Stallmann, Performed by Eric Mandat
Kurt has been one of the most influential mentors I’ve ever had. He shaped my growth as a multimedia artist and fundamentally changed how I think about multisensory experience. Here’s what he shared with me about Open Air. “Open Air is a collaborative performance featuring videos by Alfred Guzzetti, performances and improvisations by Eric Mandat using PVC pipes, and an overarching concept and sound by Kurt Stallmann. This work is partially inspired by the earliest known Neanderthal flutes. It explores and speculates on the origins of music, starting with the connection to and imitation of the environmental soundscape, leading to the development of small musical gestures, and culminating in an expressive musical language.”
Tahirih the Pure by Badie Khaleghian, Performed by Liza Stepanova
Commissioned by pianist Liza Stepanova in 2017, this piece traces the life of Tahirih—a revolutionary poet and women’s rights activist in 19th-century Iran. Liza’s commitment to immigrant voices and fearless programming made this work possible. The second movement, “Unchained,” resonates deeply with this playlist’s ethos: a breath-driven, pulse-agnostic sound world where time bends to expression. Rather than dictating form, the music invites the performer to shape its contours from within, through nuance, patience, and presence.
First Collaborative Session by Hold Your Ears
Our trio, Kate Campbell Strauss (saxophone), Aruna Kharod (sitar), and myself on electronics, explores intercultural improvisation shaped by deep listening and mutual transformation. This is our first recorded session together. The sound emerges without grid or hierarchy: gestures unfold, respond, shift. Each player carries their own idiom, but our music lives in the spaces between. We’re currently expanding this project globally, including a recent collaboration with geomungo player Hyeyoung Hwang in Korea. It’s an evolving conversation across borders.
Phantom Reach by Badie Khaleghian, Performed by Tong Yan and NobleMotion Dance
Phantom Reach unfolds within the fractured psyche of Aaron Stands, a surreal world where time dilates and perception blurs. Created with violinist Tong Yan and NobleMotion Dance, piano, violin, and electronics move between clarity and disorientation, echoing Aaron’s shifting inner state. Like others in this playlist, the piece dissolves the line between action and thought, offering sound that breathes, fragments, and reforms itself, where structure is shaped less by pulse than by psychological tension and embodied memory.
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