Persian Classical Music | Khayan Kalhor and Benham Samani | Pish daramad

This video presents excerpts of a concert of Iranian classical music performed by Kayan Kalhor (kamancheh), accompanied on the tombak by Benham Samani.
Kayhan Kalhor is a virtuoso of the kamancheh, a spike fiddle. A Grammy-winning internationally renowned soloist, he is considered an ambassador of Persian art music in the world. He is also a member of the renowned Silk Road Ensemble founded by Yo-Yo Ma, and in 2019 received the prestigious WOMEX Artist Award. Behnam Samani plays the tombak goblet drum. A founder member of the percussion group Zarbang, Samani has played with leading Iranian musicians and has toured extensively internationally.
The concert is based on the practice of improvisation in the Persian-Iranian tradition based on the radīf's complex system of modes and melodies. Giovanni De Zorzi writes in the notes to the concert programme that: 'Through creativity, sensitivity, oral memory, and mastery of one's instrument, the performer/improviser/composer can attain after years a type of improvisation in which the performer creates paths for himself as in a journey (sayir, yol, bardasht) that the listener, an attentive and enchanted music lover, knows how to follow. The concert proposed by the great masters Kalhor and Samani, both trained in the radīf, is based on improvisation, an improvisation understood in a radical way, without schemes or pre-established itineraries, based only on the inspiration that comes in the timeless instant (waqt)'.
At the beginning of this video excerpt Kayhan Kalhor performs a pish daramad (introductory piece, usually in 2/4 or 4/4) using the pizzicato technique with the kamancheh, acccompanied by the tombak; The dastgah (mode) on which this piece is based is Abu Ata, derivative mode of Shur, characterized by a melancholic and moving mood. In the second part of the video there is an improvisation in Abu Ata mode in which Kalhor plays the kamancheh with the bow.

The performance was organized by the Intercultural Institute for Comparative Music Studies of the Fondazione Giorgio Cini in collaboration with University of Venice Department of Filosofia e Beni Culturali and Casa della Cultura Iraniana di Venezia

Fondazione Giorgio Cini, Venice, July 14, 2021

Video: Marco Lutzu

Video thumbnail photo by Ashkan Rahbarian