Estonian-based composer and conductor. He studied composition, conducting, piano and double bass performance at the Royal College of Music in Stockholm, High School of Music in Basel, and the Estonian Academy of Music and Theatre. He was a resident-fellow at the Institute for Electronic Music and Acoustics in Graz. He was the 2020 recipient of the Jonathan Harvey Scholarship and a teacher / researcher at the University of Huddersfield, England in 2020–23. He is the artistic director of Sound Plasma festival (Berlin and Tallinn), as well as conductor and artistic director of Ensemble for New Music Tallinn.
As a composer, he won the 1st Prize in Welcoming Maqam in Berlin (2016). He twice represented Estonia in the International Rostrum of Composers (NAKBA for orchestra, 2019; Hurreh for twelve voices, 2022). In 2015 he won the Speech, Text, Silence competition in Basel and received an honorary diploma of the Sergei Slonimsky competition.
He composes music for ensembles such as Phoenix (Basel), Proton (Bern), Schallfeld (Graz), and many others. His works have been performed at the International Summer Courses for New Music in Darmstadt, festivals such as Mixtur (Barcelona), MATA (New York), AFEKT and Estonian Music Days (Tallinn and Tartu), Music Days in Kyiv, and L’Archipel in Geneva. As the founder and artistic director of Ensemble New Music Tallinn, Yazdani receives the Ensemble Prize of the Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation in 2026.
Selected works: Dance Macabre for chamber orchestra (2002), Symphonic Movement for electric guitar and orchestra (2002), Two Minuets for violin and piano (2002–3), Theme with Variations for flute and piano (2003), Guitar Trio (2005), Two Preludes and Fugues for piano (2005), Le Petit Prince for flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon, French horn and viola (2005–6), Khorramshahr for orchestra (2006), Concert Opening for orchestra (2007), Four Songs for piano and baritone / soprano (2007), Geometric Figures for piano (2007–8), Clarinet Quartet for clarinet and string trio (2008), Heterotopies for wind orchestra (2008), Music for strings for 12 string instruments (2009), Stain for orchestra (2009; rev. for violin, 2010), Dimension I, Construction on Time for ensemble (2010), Dimension III, Heterodyne Structures for string trio and recorded instruments / 12 string instruments (2010), Constructive Interference for 12 timpani (2011), Finite Functions of the Infinitive Sets for four clarinets (2011), Dimension II, Destruction for six musicians and recorded instruments / 18 instruments (2012), Acoustical Modelings for 15 musicians (2012), Intermodulation for alto flute, mezzo-soprano, kannel and cello (2012), Recordatio, duo for cello and saxophone (2012–13), Aus tiefer Not… for cello (2013), Convolutional Emergence for violin and percussion (2013), Anamorphism, Hommage à Gustav Mahler for flute, clarinet, violin and cello (2013), Variations on a Theme by R. Beppel for nine players with individual clicktrack system (2014), Demodulation for flute, oboe, clarinet, violin, viola and cello (2014), Shoe’badeH for three musicians (2015), … plenty of nothings toadd… for cello and viola (2016), Dispersion for qanun and 13 instruments (2016), Stationarity, on temporal motions for two percussion (2016–17), Propagation of Uncertainty four flutes with glissando headjoint (2017), Stromateis: Emergence for saxophone quartet (2017), Stromateis: Lessness for flute and clarinet (2017), Of that which is for ensemble (2017), Nakba for orchestra (2018), Exponential Decay, or there’s nothing to see here for ensemble and electronics (2019), Instruction Manual of How to Learn Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb in 5 Minutes for four Japanese toy instruments (2019), Gā Geriv for four flutes / solo flute with prerecorded flutes (2019–20), may contain choking hazard for any percussive thing with looper pedal (2020), Hommage à Georg Friedrich Haas for two pianos tuned a quartertone apart (2020), Contains Strong Emotions and Explicit Sounds for ensemble (2021), Hommage à Alvin Lucier for electric guitar, cello and piano with looper pedals (2021–22), Hurreh for 12 voices (2022), Vitamin B52 & freedom fries for five electric guitars (2022), In my boundless turmoil for six voices (2023), Winter Wolf for two keyboards (2023), Romance or something for four MIDI controllers (2023), Shimmering of White Phosphorus: Incidental music to commiserate the state of being for ensemble (2024), Sharveh for torupill (Estonian bagpipes) and chamber ensemble (2025).