Asia Society
Presents
Kayhan Kalhor with Ali Bahrami Fard
“I Will Not Stand Alone”
Saturday, November 16th, 8:00 P.M.
Asia Society
725 Park Avenue at 70
th
Street
New York City
Preceded by a Pre-Performance Lecture by
Professor Stephen Blum of CUNY Graduate
Center College at 7:00 PM
Kayhan Kalhor with Ali Bahrami Fard
“I Will Not Stand Alone”
During the early period of unrest in my country, I felt very isolated. This was one of the
most difficult stages in my life, where darkness and violence seemed to be taking over. Closing
in allowed me the time to rethink music: not technically, as my work has followed a certain
path, but this period allowed me to see the importance of music and how it can open doors of
hope. It took me a while to understand this, and the events I witnessed crystallized many things
for me. I chose to be with the people and play music for them, feeling more connected than
ever before.
This album is the product of that dark period. The process of making this music and
letting it be heard allowed me to realize that I will not stand alone.
—Kayhan Kalhor
About the Artists
Kayhan Kalhor (Shah Kaman) a three-time GRAMMY nominee, 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 Coppola’s Youth Without Youth in a
score that he collaborated on with Osvaldo Golijov. In 2004, Kayhan was invited by American
composer John Adams to give a solo recital at Carnegie Hall as part of his Perspectives Series
and 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. Kayhan is a
member of Yo-Yo Ma’s Silk Road Project and his compositions appear on all three of the
Ensemble’s albums.
Ali Bahrami Fard (Bass Santour) born in Shiraz, studied santour with Mrs. Arfa Atra'i and
the legendary master Ostad Faramarz Payvar. With his impeccable technique and exquisite
sound quality, Ali is one of his generation's most gifted and masterful santour players. He is a
co-founder of the ensemble 'Santour Navazan,' and he has toured with the Kayhan Kalhor
Ensemble, Baran Ensemble, Iran Zamin Ensemble, the chamber music ensemble of the Iranian
Conservatory of Music, and as a soloist with the Strad Kiev Symphonic Orchestra. He has
composed music for theater, film, and television including the music for the prize winning
theater piece 'Among the Clouds' in Brussels. He has written books and essays on Iranian
music, including 'Feragh,' a collection of compositions written for two santours, and
'Goshayesh,' for a plucked and hammered string ensemble. He teaches santour, music theory
and composition at Shiraz University.
Creating the Shah Kaman
by Peter Biffin
The Shah Kaman has a lineage stemming from two different sources. Its physical form owes
much to the traditional kamanchehs of Persia and Azerbaijan, but the way it makes it’s sound
comes from the tarhu (a new form of spike fiddle that I created in 1995).
I first came across the kamancheh in miniature paintings from the Middle East and Central
Asia, and there was an elegance in its form that I found extremely attractive. The first bowed
instrument I made was a kamancheh with an almost traditional design, except that it had
sympathetic strings in a channel down the middle of the neck.
From 1980 onwards I experimented with the kamancheh and various other forms of spike
fiddle from the East, especially the Turkish tanbur and the Chinese erhu. These instruments all
used a skin top, and I was drawn to the type of sound that came from such a light-weight
sounding board. There were other aspects of skin tops that I didn’t like – because of its
flexibility, skin is not good at producing low notes. By 1994 I gave up trying to get the sound I
wanted from a skin top, and changed to using a wooden cone instead – this weighed the same
as a skin top, but was much more rigid. Using this concept I created the new instrument that I
called tarhu, combining the words tanbur and erhu.
In 1995 I heard a recording of the great Azerbaijani kamancheh player Habil Aliyev, which
proved to be very significant for me. I listened to this recording hundreds of times over the
next few years and finally in 2001 I made a kamancheh version of the tarhu. The overall
design drew heavily on traditional kamancheh but inside it was pure tarhu, with a light-weight
wooden cone suspended within the body.
In 2002, I met Kayhan Kalhor when he and I were both performing at the Knee Fiddle Magic
festival in Rudolstadt, Germany. Kayhan liked the sound of the tarhu, but wanted to explore an
instrument with sympathetic strings. I had already done extensive work in this field, so we
decided to work together on developing a kamancheh tarhu with five playing strings and seven
sympathetic strings.
The first version was sent to Kayhan in 2003 – some aspects of this instrument were good, but
the sound needed further development. An opportunity to do this came up in 2004 when, with
the help of Ross Daly, I was able to spend 3 weeks on Crete working with Habil Aliyev on the
sound of the kamancheh tarhu. This was a wonderfully creative period, and there was a huge
leap forward.
Kayhan and I collaborated further over the next few years as I continued to develop the new
form of kamancheh tarhu for him, which he eventually received in 2008. When Kayhan
suggested that this form of instrument should be called Shah Kaman, it seemed to me that after
a long journey we had reached a significant milestone.
Bass Santour
The santour is a wooden, hammered dulcimer with seventy-two strings arranged on adjustable
tuning pegs in eighteen quadruple sets. The instrument is played using lightweight wooden
plectrums or mezrab, which are often covered by a piece of felt or cotton to soften the sound. A
percussive instrument, its strings are tapped using wrist movements, with the dynamics
controlled by the stroke. The santour is tuned diatonically according to the desired mode.
In this concert, Ali Bahrami Fard performs on a bass santour, a modern interpretation of the
traditional instrument with ninety-six strings and twenty-four bridges, twelve on each side,
with four strings falling on each bridge and tuned to the same note. It is also larger and sounds
an octave lower than a regular santour.
Pre-Performance Lecture
Stephen Blum (Lecturer) joined the CUNY Graduate Center faculty in 1987, when its
concentration in ethnomusicology was initiated. He has published several articles, books, and
encyclopedia articles on general topics (composition, improvisation, music analysis, modern
music history, cultural exchange) and on specific musical practices of Iran, Kurdistan, Central
Asia, Europe, and North America. He has been active in the Society for Ethnomusicology and
currently serves on the editorial boards of the British Journal for Ethnomusicology and the
Journal of the American Musicological Society.
Iran Modern
Asia Society Museum has organized the groundbreaking exhibition, Iran Modern, on view
from September 6, 2013 to January 5, 2014. The first major international loan exhibition on
the subject, Iran Modern showcases paintings, sculpture, photography, and works on paper in
the three decades leading up to the Revolution in 1979. A full season of programs will
accompany the exhibition.
Selected Related Programs
Film Series:
Iran 1960s-1970s
Kamran Shirdel—Social Documentaries
Wednesday, November 20, 6:30 PM
Film Series:
Iran 1960s-1970s
The Traveler
Abbas Kiarostami, 1974, Iran, 74 min.
Friday, November 22, 6:30 PM
Discussion:
Shattering Stereotypes of Iran and Iranians through Fiction
Wednesday, December 4, 6:30 PM
Performance:
Sound: The Encounter, New Music from Iran and Syria
Co-presented with the Aga Khan Music Initiative
Saturday, December 7, 8:00 PM
About Performing Arts at Asia Society
The Asia Society Performing Arts program has been a pioneer in the presentation of traditional and
contemporary Asian performing arts in the United States since 1957. It has introduced American audiences to
the work of performing artists ranging from some of the greatest figures of traditional music such as sitar
virtuoso Ravi Shankar, to seminal contemporary dance companies like Cloud Gate Dance Theatre of Taiwan,
and American artists influenced by Asian cultures such as Philip Glass. The Society has commissioned new
works such as Empty Traditions/City of Peonies with choreographer Yin Mei, Wenji: Eighteen Songs of a
Nomad Flute, a bilingual (Chinese-English) chamber opera by Macau-born composer Bun-Ching Lam, In
What Language? A Song Cycle of Lives in Transit, composer Vijay Iyer, Kinsmen with Rudresh Mahanthappa
and Chen Shi-Zheng’s Forgiveness. Current major projects include Creative Voices of Muslim Asia, and an
exciting season of performing artists from China, Japan, Cambodia and Myanmar. For more information,
please visit asiasociety.org
Asia Society Staff
Rachel Cooper, Director, Global Performing Arts and Special Cultural Initiatives
Rachel Rosado, Program Officer, Cultural Programs
Stephen Mrowiec, Global Performing Arts and Cultural Programs Intern
Hesh Sarmalkar, Director, Events and Visitor Services
Elaine Merguerian, Director, Communications
Eric DeArmon, A/V Manager
Executive Management for Kayhan Kalhor and Ali Bahrami Fard
Opus 3 Artists
470 Park Avenue South
New York NY 10016
Special thank you to Mary Pat Buerkle.
This program is part of the Asia Society’s ongoing initiative, Creative Voices of Muslim Asia, made possible
by the support of the Doris Duke Foundation For Islamic Art. Additional support provided by the Robert
Sterling Clark Foundation, WLS Spencer Foundation and the American Institute of Iranian Studies.
This program is presented in conjunction with the exhibition, Iran Modern, on view September 6, 2013
through January 5, 2014
AMERICAN INSTITUTE OF IRANIAN STUDIES
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