Mehrdad Torabi was born in 1942 in Tehran. He started learning setar in 1981 with professors Jalal Zolfanoun and Reza Ghasemi and then tried to prepare the educational books of Jalal Zolfanoun under his supervision. He completed the "three-volume course of Setar training" in 1996, and other students of the master completed its subsequent volumes.
Mehrdad has been teaching setar, writing books and giving concerts, producing and publishing music for nearly 30 years, and his teacher has considered him one of his school's best masters. In the '80s, he used his experiences and learnings to compile the book "Mirza Abdullah's Row for Setar" (book and CD), a work that his teacher welcomed, and he included it in his teaching program for setar's students.
At the same time, he enjoyed the guidance of great people such as Ahmad Ebadi, Parviz Meshkatian, Mohammad Reza Lotfi and Mohammad Ali Baharlou, and for several years he studied with Professor Houshang Zarif. "Tab-e Banafshe" (a collection of 50 old and famous compositions for tar and setar) is another of his written works that has been published with a CD.
His setar solo collection has been released in two albums, "Chaharpareh" and "Shorshehnaz," along with Siavash Akbari's tombak. "Kouye Janan" and "Faryad Aseman" (vocal by Ali Rostamian), Sodazdegan (vocal by Payam Mastouri) and Bagh Tamasha has been presented to music lovers.