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On this recording Kayhan Kalhor debuts a new instrument, the "Shah Kaman", designed especially for him, with accompaniment by the rarely heard bass santour. It is a meditation on one of the most difficult stages in his life, where darkness and violence seemed to be taking over yet through music and his connection to the people, hope rises. This album is bittersweet reflection on love, life and country. 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 thirteen, he was invited to work with the National Orchestra of Radio and Television of Iran, where he performed for five years. When he was seventeen 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. Kayhan 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 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. Kayhan 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.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful
Format:Audio CD
Kayhan Kalhor here debuts a new instrument created for him - the "shah kaman". Australian instrument maker Peter Biffin had come across the Iranian kamancheh (literally "little bow") and similar forms such as the Turkish tanbur and Chinese erhu, but wanted to get a deeper sound, which he achieved by dispensing with the skin top and using a wooden cone. He named this the "tarhu" as a cross of tanbur and erhu.
Biffin later created a kamancheh form of the tarhu, and met with Kalhor at a festival in 2002 where he introduced it to him. Kalhor liked his creation, but wanted to explore an instrument with sympathetic strings - a form relatively unknown in the West, confined to ancient instruments such as the hurdy-gurdy or the Baroque viola d'amore, but more common in the Indian subcontinent in the likes of the sitar - perhaps Kalhor's collaboration with a sitar player in his "Ghazal" project fired his curiosity. Biffin set about working on a "kamancheh tarhu" with five playing strings and seven sympathetic ones, which Kalhor rechristened the "shah kaman" - king of bows.
Kalhor utilises this amazing instrument as though he were able to combine several others into one, such is the range he can employ, and indeed the emotional range he can transmit to the listener is equally broad. Kalhor is accompanied by Ali Bahrami Fard on an unusual bass santur, an octave lower than the standard santur, and thus the perfect accompaniment to the shah kaman's lower register. Fard is no supporting act here, but an equal to Kalhor in their interplay.
This album is born of Kalhor's reflection on the unrest in his Iranian homeland in 2009-10, and the need to open doors of hope, and realise that "I will not stand alone". The music indeed bears this out, beginning in somewhat mournful and subdued mood, but Kalhor and Fard, not standing alone, gradually draw strength, hope and energy from each other and lift us up too on a rush of optimism.
Biffin later created a kamancheh form of the tarhu, and met with Kalhor at a festival in 2002 where he introduced it to him. Kalhor liked his creation, but wanted to explore an instrument with sympathetic strings - a form relatively unknown in the West, confined to ancient instruments such as the hurdy-gurdy or the Baroque viola d'amore, but more common in the Indian subcontinent in the likes of the sitar - perhaps Kalhor's collaboration with a sitar player in his "Ghazal" project fired his curiosity. Biffin set about working on a "kamancheh tarhu" with five playing strings and seven sympathetic ones, which Kalhor rechristened the "shah kaman" - king of bows.
Kalhor utilises this amazing instrument as though he were able to combine several others into one, such is the range he can employ, and indeed the emotional range he can transmit to the listener is equally broad. Kalhor is accompanied by Ali Bahrami Fard on an unusual bass santur, an octave lower than the standard santur, and thus the perfect accompaniment to the shah kaman's lower register. Fard is no supporting act here, but an equal to Kalhor in their interplay.
This album is born of Kalhor's reflection on the unrest in his Iranian homeland in 2009-10, and the need to open doors of hope, and realise that "I will not stand alone". The music indeed bears this out, beginning in somewhat mournful and subdued mood, but Kalhor and Fard, not standing alone, gradually draw strength, hope and energy from each other and lift us up too on a rush of optimism.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
5.0 out of 5 stars
1 review
13 of 13 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Beautiful, Deep, and Passionate Voyage
22 Feb 2012
By Dr. Debra Jan Bibel
- Published on Amazon.com
Format:Audio CD|Amazon Verified Purchase
Much has led up to this album. Kayhan Kalhor and his kamancheh Iranian spiked fiddle appeared on recordings of the Dastan Ensemble, of Masters of Persian Music, as part of Ghazal, with Mohammad Reza Shajarian in new compositions, and with Yo-Yo Ma's Silk Road Ensemble, where I heard him play his novel shah kaman, a unique kamancheh constructed with sympathetic strings. On this deep, dark, emotional meditation, he is joined by Ali Bahrami Fard also playing an unusual instrument, the bass santour, a hammered dulcimer with 96 strings in quadruple sets over 24 bridges. It is an octave lower than the customary santour. Together these artists and special instruments send us on a voyage down a long river. [See Comments regarding track 2 & 3 position error; my description follows proper sequence.] The second track takes us over the moderate rapids of longing, after which the current and eddies make the vessel spin and dance. Next, we gently enter a peaceful pool where our raft is propelled along banks of perfumed flowers. After a passionate interlude, the raft plunges down a series of stepped falls amid deep canyons. The shah kaman cries out in the anguish of exile. The last track, the title track, quickly takes the vessel to its destination with sail and brisk wind. It is a rededication to music, a force that dissolves boundaries and unites peoples. The 59-minute long album is a powerful, gripping opus by this master of traditional and improvisational Persian music.
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