Iranian kamancheh virtuoso Kalhor does not undertake his transcultural projects lightly. Ghazal, the Persian-Indian ‘synthesis’ group which he initiated with sitarist Shujaat Husain Khan followed some fifteen years of dialogue with North Indian musicians, in search of the right partner.

“Because I come from a musical background which is widely based on improvisation, I really like to explore this element with players from different yet related traditions, to see what we can discover together. I’m testing the water – putting one foot to the left, so to speak, in Turkey. And one foot to the right, in India. I’m between them. Geographically, physically, musically. And I’m trying to understand our differences. What is the difference between Shujaat and Erdal? Which is the bigger gap? And where will this lead?”Kayhan Kalhor was born in Tehran in 1963. At the age of seven he began his music studies under Master Ahmad Mohajer. A child prodigy on the kamancheh (Iranian spike fiddle), he was invited at the age of thirteen to work in the Iranian National Radio and Television Orchestra, where he performed for five years. 

At seventeen, Kalhor began working with the Shayda Ensemble of the Chavosh Cultural Centre, the most prestigious arts organisation at the time in Iran. While performing with Shayda, he continued studying the Iranian classical repertoire (radif) with different masters. He also absorbed regional repertoires and styles in the course of his travels in Iran, including those of Khorasan in the northeast and Kurdistan in the west.

Kalhor studied Western classical music in Rome and at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada. He has composed works for Iran's most renowned vocalists, including Mohammad Reza Shajarian and Shahram Nazeri, and also performed with Iran's greatest masters, including Faramarz Payvar and Hossein Alizadeh. In 1991 he co-founded Dastan, the renowned Persian classical music ensemble, and in 1997 he and Shujaat Khan launched Ghazal.

text courtesy of ECM Records Publicity