{"id":49091,"date":"2025-11-23T06:32:07","date_gmt":"2025-11-23T06:32:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/49091\/"},"modified":"2025-11-23T06:32:07","modified_gmt":"2025-11-23T06:32:07","slug":"kayhan-kalhor-iranian-composer-to-perform-in-nyc","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/49091\/","title":{"rendered":"Kayhan Kalhor, Iranian Composer to Perform in NYC\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"

Kayhan Kalhor, Iran\u2019s foremost contemporary composer, educator, and master musician, will offer a rare evening of Persian classical music at The Town Hall <\/a>on November 30 at 7pm.<\/p>\n

The evening will be Kalhor\u2019s first large-scale concert of Persian classical music in New York City in more than 10 years.<\/p>\n

\"KayhanKayhan Kalhor<\/p>\n

His Town Hall appearance will be a rare celebration of pure Persian classical music, a tradition of depth, subtlety, and beauty.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe come from a venerable culture that has made profound contributions to the world through a rich legacy of poetry, science, architecture, philosophy, and art, and that has shaped civilizations for centuries. Through my music, I hope to reveal the splendor of my homeland, so often misrepresented and maligned. When people connect through music, the space opens for dialogue, awareness, and discovery.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kayhan Kalhor<\/p>\n

A GRAMMY-winning virtuoso of the\u00a0kamancheh\u00a0(a bowed, cello-like instrument often referred to as a spike fiddle), Kayhan Kalhor is a transcendent figure in the classical and global music worlds.\u00a0He has performed Persian classical music as a soloist and as a member of various ensembles and orchestras, as well as through notable collaborations across musical and cultural traditions.<\/p>\n

He was an original member of\u00a0Yo-Yo Ma\u2019s Silk Road Project, co-founded the Persian \u201csupergroup\u201d\u00a0The Masters of Persian Music\u00a0with Mohammed Reza Shajarian and Hossein Alizadeh, created the Grammy-nominated Persian-Indian ensemble\u00a0Ghazal\u00a0with sitarist Shujaat Husain Khan, performed with orchestras including the\u00a0New York Philharmonic<\/a>, and recorded with the\u00a0Kronos Quartet<\/a>, the string quartet\u00a0Brooklyn Rider,\u00a0Malian kora master\u00a0Toumani Diabat\u00e9, and Turkish virtuoso\u00a0Erdal Erzincan.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Born in Iran to a Kurdish family, Kalhor\u2019s parents were music lovers. He grew up listening to both Kurdish folk and Persian classical music around the house. A musical child prodigy,\u00a0he was just 13 when he was invited to join the\u00a0Iranian National Radio and Television Orchestra, where he performed for five years.\u00a0It was the beginning of an extraordinary career that included studies of the Iranian classical repertoire and regional traditions, especially those of Khorason and Kordestan, and Western classical music, in Rome, Italy, in the late 70s, and later in Ottawa, Canada, where he received a degree in music.\u00a0<\/p>\n

At Town Hall, Kalhor will be accompanied by one of today\u2019s great\u00a0setar\u00a0players, Kiya Tabassian,\u00a0a master of the lute-like instrument, and Behrouz Jamali on\u00a0tombak, a goblet drum considered the principal percussion instrument in Persian classical music.\u00a0Musician, singer and composer Tabassian, a resident of Montreal and former student of Kalhor\u2019s, has explored the blending of Persian musical traditions and global styles. In 2017, he co-founded and has since served as artistic director of the Centre des Musiciens du Monde in\u00a0Montreal. Jamali, in addition to his work as a percussionist, is also a music producer and documentary filmmaker. He is based in the United States.<\/p>\n

Kalhor emphasizes that \u201cour music is not religious but it is deeply connected to Iranian philosophy and mysticism, and this makes it a spiritual music. This concert is pure music,\u201d he adds, \u201cit doesn\u2019t have anything to do with politics or social matters.\u00a0As musicians, our mission is to tell the story of our culture.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Kayhan Kalhor, Iran\u2019s foremost contemporary composer, educator, and master musician, will offer a rare evening of Persian classical…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":49092,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[27663,9,56,63,65,64,13214],"class_list":["post-49091","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york-city","tag-kayhan-kalhor","tag-new-york","tag-ny","tag-nyc","tag-nyc-headlines","tag-nyc-news","tag-the-town-hall"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49091","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=49091"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49091\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/49092"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=49091"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=49091"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=49091"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}