CARNEGIE HALL PRESENTS
Kayhan Kalhor Ensemble

Zankel Hall
Saturday, October 18th, 2008 at 8:30 PM

Kayhan Kalhor Ensemble
·· Kayhan Kalhor, Kamancheh
·· Hamid Reza Nourbakhsh, Vocals
·· Siamak Jahangiry, Ney
·· Behrooz Jamali, Tombak

Iran's renowned kamancheh (spike fiddle) player/composer Kayhan Kalhor, well known for his work with Yo-Yo Ma’s Silk Road Project, Ghazal, and Masters of Persian Music, performs new works in the Persian classical tradition with his ensemble.

Presented by Carnegie Hall in partnership with the World Music Institute.

Program Notes:

PERSIAN CLASSICAL MUSIC

From high mountain ranges to vast desert plains and fertile coastal areas, Iran is a land of contrasts. Iranians often explain the profound spirituality of their music and poetry as a response to this landscape as well as to the country’s turbulent history. Rooted in a rich and ancient heritage, this is a music of contemplation and meditation linked through the poetry to Sufism, the mystical branch of Islam whose members seek spiritual union with God. The aesthetic beauty of this refined and intensely personal music lies in the intricate nuances of the freely flowing solo melody lines that are often compared with the elaborate designs found on Persian carpets and miniature paintings.

Creative performance is at the heart of Persian classical music. The importance of creativity in this music is often expressed through the image of the nightingale (bol bol). According to popular belief, the nightingale possesses the most beautiful voice on earth and is also said to never repeat itself in song. A bird of great symbolic power throughout the Middle East, it represents the ultimate symbol of musical creativity. To the extent that Persian classical music lives through the more or less spontaneous re-creation of the traditional repertoire in performance, the music is often described as improvised. The musicians themselves talk freely of improvisation, or bedaheh navazi (“spontaneous playing”), a term borrowed from the realm of oral poetry that has been applied to Persian classical music since the early 20th century. Musicians are also aware of the concept of improvisation in styles of music outside Iran, particularly in jazz and Indian classical music. But as in so many other “improvised” traditions, the performance of Persian classical music is far from “free”—it is in fact firmly grounded in a lengthy and rigorous training which involves the precise memorization of a canonic repertoire known as radif (“order”) and is the basis for all creativity in Persian classical music.

Like other Middle Eastern traditions, Persian classical music is based on the exploration of short modal pieces: in Iran these are known as gushehs, and there are 200 or so gushehs in the complete radif. These gushehs are grouped into 12 modal “systems” called dastgah. A dastgah essentially comprises a progression of modally-related gushehs in a manner somewhat similar to the progression of pieces in a Baroque suite. Each gusheh has its own name and its own unique mode (but is related to other gushehs in the same dastgah) as well as characteristic motifs. The number of gushehs in a dastgah varies from as few as five in a relatively short dastgah such as Dashti, to as many as 44 or more in a dastgah such as Mahur. The training of a classical musician essentially involves memorizing the complete repertoire of the radif. Only when the entire repertoire has been memorized—a process that takes many years—are musicians considered ready to embark on creative digressions, eventually leading to improvisation itself. So the radif is not performed as such, but represents the starting point for creative performance and composition.

The complex detail of the solo melody line is of utmost importance in Persian classical music. There is no harmony and only an occasional light drone (in contrast with the constant underlying drone in Indian classical music). As such, Persian classical music has traditionally been performed by either a solo instrumentalist, or a solo singer and a single instrumental accompanist—in which case the instrument would shadow the voice and play short passages between the phrases of poetry. In the course of the last century it became increasingly common for musicians to perform in larger groups, usually comprising a singer and four or five instrumentalists.


THE POETRY

Poetry has played a central role in Iranian culture for centuries. At times when the Persian language and identity was under assault, it was poetry that kept the essence of the culture alive. One such period, still remembered as one of the darkest in Iranian history, was the Mongol invasion of the 13th century through which the sufi poet Molavi (also known as Jalal-e Din Rumi, 1207-1273) lived. The fact that some of the finest poetry ever written in the Persian language emerged from this time is a testament to the passion with which the culture was maintained. Moreover, it was through the poetry, particularly that of Molavi, that the message of mystical sufism found its most potent voice. With religious proscriptions against music, dance, and representational art at various times over the past few centuries, the creative energies of the artistically minded have often found an outlet through poetic expression. It is no surprise to find that this art form—so imbued with history, addressing some of the most fundamental and eternal philosophical issues of human existence—should play such an important role in the lives of Iranians today. Poetry is also central to Persian classical music—it is still unusual to hear a performance without a singer—and vocal sections are usually set to the poetry of medieval mystic poets such as Baba Taher (11th century AD), Sheikh Attar (12th century AD), Molavi and Hafez (1325-1389) and recently to the words of classical contemporary poets.

Edited from notes by Laudan Nooshin, City University, London



THE INSTRUMENTS

The kamancheh (spike fiddle), the ancient bowed string instrument of Iran, is ancestor to most bowed instruments throughout Asia and Europe. It has a small hollowed belly made of walnut or mulberry wood with a thin stretched skin covering and a conical shaped neck. The modern kamancheh has four strings, generally tuned in fourths or fifths, and is held vertically.

The ney is an oblique rim blown reed flute with six finger holes and another for the thumb.

The tar, known in Persia as the “king of instruments,” has a hollowed hardwood double-bowled body with a stretched lambskin membrane. It is essentially a fretted long-necked lute with three courses of strings.

The tombak (goblet drum) is carved from solid wood and covered at the wide end with lamb or goatskin. It is held horizontally across the player’s lap and is played with both hands.

Kayhan Kalhor Ensemble
·· Kayhan Kalhor, Kamancheh
·· Hamid Reza Nourbakhsh, Vocals
·· Siamak Jahangiry, Ney
·· Sahba Motallebi, Tar
·· Behrooz Jamali, Tombak

·· Kayhan Kalhor, Kamancheh
Kayhan Kalhor is an internationally acclaimed virtuoso on the kamancheh (Persian spiked fiddle). His performances of Persian music and his many collaborations have attracted audiences around the globe. Born in Tehran, Iran, he began his musical studies at the age of seven. At 13, he was invited to work with the National Orchestra of Radio and Television of Iran, where he performed for five years. When he was 17, he began working with the Shayda Ensemble of the Chavosh Cultural Center, the most prestigious arts organization in Iran at the time. He has traveled extensively throughout Iran, studying the music of its many regions, in particular those of Khorason and Kordestan.
Mr. Kalhor 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. 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. Mr. Kalhor 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 collaborated on with Osvaldo Golijov. In 2004, Mr. Kalhor was invited by American composer John Adams to give a solo recital at Carnegie Hall as part of the Perspectives series. In the same year he appeared on a double bill at Lincoln Center’s Mostly Mozart Festival, sharing the program with the Festival Orchestra performing the Mozart Requiem. Mr. Kalhor is an original member of Yo-Yo Ma’s Silk Road Project and his compositions Blue as the Turquoise Night of Neyshabur, Silent City and Mountains Are Far Away appear on all three of the Ensemble’s albums. Three of his recent recordings have been nominated for Grammy Awards—Faryad, Without You and The Rain. His new CD Silent City, including the innovative ensemble Brooklyn Rider, was released on the World Village label in September 2008.

·· Hamid Reza Nourbakhsh, Vocals
Hamid Reza Nourbakhsh is considered one of today’s finest Iranian vocalists. He studied under the supervision of Mohammad Reza Shajarian, a living legend in Iranian classical music. He has performed with renowned artists and groups, including the Shams Ensemble, the Aref Ensemble, the Ukraine Philharmonic Orchestra, and the great santur maestro Faramarz Payvar. He performed with Kayhan Kalhor at the Théâtre de la Ville in Paris and is currently the director of Iran’s House of Music. This program marks his New York debut.

·· Siamak Jahangiry, Ney
Siamak Jahangiry began playing the ney at the age of 12. He studied with Abdolnaghi Afsharnia before training with Iran’s most eminent ney players, primarily Mohammad Ali Kiani Nejad. Mr. Jahangiry received his degree in music from Tehran University of the Arts, and has written a book on masters of the ney and 20th century playing techniques. He is a member of the Abd-al-kadir Ensemble, a group focused on the compositions of Abd-al-kadir Maraghi—one of the most prominent Iranian music theorists and composers of the 14th century. Mr. Jahangiry is also a member of Yo-Yo Ma’s Silk Road Ensemble and appears on the ensemble’s albums Silk Road Journeys: When Strangers Meet and New Impossibilities, as well as recordings with his own ensemble. He currently resides in Tehran where he is a composer and an enthusiastic teacher of the ney.

·· Behrooz Jamali, Tombak
Born into an Iranian family of scientists and artists, Behrouz Jamali studied Persian classical music with a number of renowned musicians, including Mohammad Akhavan. Since moving to Washington, DC, he has continued his activities as both an engineer and an artist. Mr. Jamali has conducted master classes on Persian classical music at The Juilliard School and Middlebury College, and performed on various occasions with Kayhan Kalhor.