Kayhan kalhor cd
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Three-time GRAMMY nominee Kayhan Kalhor is an internationally acclaimed virtuoso on the kamancheh, who through his many musical collaborations has been instrumental in popularizing Persian music in the West and is a creative force in today’s music scene. His performances of traditional Persian music and multiple collaborations have attracted audiences around the globe. He has studied the music of Iran’s many regions, in particular those of Khorason and Kordestan, and has toured the world as a soloist with various ensembles and orchestras including the New York Philharmonic and the Orchestre National de Lyon. He is co-founder of the renowned ensembles Dastan, Ghazal: Persian & Indian Improvisations and Masters of Persian Music. Kayhan Kalhor has composed works for Iran’s most renowned vocalists Mohammad Reza Shajarian and Shahram Nazeri and has also performed and recorded with Iran’s greatest instrumentalists. He has composed music for television and film and was most recently featured on the soundtrack of Francis Ford Copolla’s Youth Without Youth in a score that he collabor
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Kayhan Kalhor
Kayhan Kalhor, born 1963, is a Kurdish Iranian kamancheh player, composer and master of classical Persian music.
Kayhan Kalhor was born in Kermanshah. He began studying music at seven years of age. By age thirteen he was playing in the National Orchestra of Radio and Television of Iran. Continuing his music studies under various teachers, he studied in the Persian radif tradition and also travelled to study in the northern part of Khorasan province, where music traditions have Kurdish and Turkic influences as well as Persian. At a musical conservatory in Tehran around age 20 Kalhor worked under the directorship of Mohammad-Reza Lotfi who is from Northern Khorasan. Kalhor also travelled in the northwestern (Kurdish) provinces of Iran. He later moved to Rome and Ottawa to study European classical music.
Kalhor has composed works for, and played alongside, the famous Iranian vocalists Mohammad Reza Shajarian and Shahram Nazeri. He has also composed and performed with the Indian sitar player Shujaat Husain Khan, the two forming
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Kayhan Kalhor Profile
Kayhan Kalhor (photo: HR Shirmohammadi)
Kayhan Kalhor plays his kamancheh kneeling down in the traditional position because it enhances his concentration. ‘It’s like riding a wild horse. You can’t let your mind wander even for a second,’ he explains. Born in 1963 into a Kurdish family he grew up in Tehran and first studied the violin, before taking up the kamancheh, sometimes referred to as a ’spike fiddle’ and an ancestor of the Western violin with its roots deep in traditional Persian culture a penetrating, sinewy tone. By the age of 15, he was practising up to 18 hours a day.
Kayhan Kalhor (photo: HR Shirmohammadi)
He studied in both Italy and Canada and his debut album Scattering Stars Like Dust was released in 1998. By happy coincidence, it was reviewed in the very first issue of Songlines, which hailed a magnificent new player of an instrument little known in the West and called the record ‘a mesmerising feat of colours and timbres.’
Dividing his time between North America and Iran, since then Kalhor has made a succession of b
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