Arash Mohafez is a musician, ethnomusicologist, and composer whose work has established him at the forefront of the Iranian neoclassical movement.

Born in Tehran in 1981, he began studying the Persian santur at the age of nine. Mohafez received his doctorate in ethnomusicology at the University of Paris X Nanterre in 2016 with a dissertation on historical and musical connections between the Persian and Turco-Ottoman classical traditions, which serves as the topic of a forthcoming book (Paris: Geuthner). He has also authored some 20 articles published in Iran as well as in Europe, Azerbaijan, and Turkey. In 2013, Mohafez released Ajamlar, a contemporary reconstruction of compositions attributed to 16th-century and 17th-century Iranian composers represented in Ottoman sources.

Mohafez performs frequently as a soloist on the santur, and is artistic director of the Neoclassical Ensemble of Tehran, which he founded in 2017 to revive forgotten compositions by Persian musicians and stimulate the creation of new neoclassical works by a younger Iranian generation inspired by the rediscovery of their classical musical heritage.