ARTISTS Booking inquiries: T 212.584.7500 [email protected]www.opus3artists.com BBCI.COM “Kayhan Kalhor’s music speaks from an ancient Persian tradition while sounding timeless and spiritually invigorating today.” STRINGS MAGAZINE “Brooklyn Rider is a gifted string quartet that mixes the classics with the contemporary to create music that is emotionally exhilarating and intellectually stimulating.” LUCID CULTURE “Kayhan Kalhor is having a hard time doing anything wrong right now: pretty much every- thing the renowned Iranian kamancheh (spike fiddle) player touches turns into something magical. Like most of his contemporaries, Kalhor delights in cross-cultural collaboration, and this latest cd, created with inventive string quartet Brooklyn Rider is typical. Brisk, bracing, exhilarating and often wrenchingly haunting, it’s a spectacularly successful achievement.” B R O O K L Y N R I D E R Kayhan Kalhor & PRESS
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“Kayhan Kalhor’s music speaks from an ancient Persian tradition while sounding timeless and spiritually invigorating today.”
StringS magazine
“Brooklyn Rider is a gifted string quartet that mixes the classics with the contemporary to create music that is emotionally exhilarating and intellectually stimulating.”
LuCid CuLture
“Kayhan Kalhor is having a hard time doing anything wrong right now: pretty much every-thing the renowned Iranian kamancheh (spike fiddle) player touches turns into something magical. Like most of his contemporaries, Kalhor delights in cross-cultural collaboration, and this latest cd, created with inventive string quartet Brooklyn Rider is typical. Brisk, bracing, exhilarating and often wrenchingly haunting, it’s a spectacularly successful achievement.”
BROOKLYN RIDERKayhan Kalhor
&PRESS
A MAster IrAnIAn MusIcIAn PlAys culturAl AMbAssAdor
August 27, 2008 • The New York Times • BY VIVIEN SCHWEITZER
In “Silent City,” a hypnotic work commemorating Halabjah, a Kurdish village annihilated by Saddam Hussein, the kamancheh, an upright four-stringed Persian fiddle, breaks out in a lamenting wail based on a traditional Turkish melody.
“Silent City” is included on a new disc of the same name on the World Village label, which Kayhan Kalhor, a vir-tuoso kamancheh player, recorded with the young string quartet Brooklyn Rider.
The work opens with a desolate murmuring improvised by the strings, eerily evoking the swirling dust of barren ruins, with a Kurdish melody heralding the rebuilding of the destroyed village. It has a particular resonance for Mr.
Kalhor, 45, who was born in Tehran to a family of Kurdish descent. The sound of the kamancheh is “warm and very close to the human voice,” he said by phone from Tehran, where he now lives.
He began studying the kamancheh at 7 and playing with Iran’s National Orchestra of Radio and Television at 13. He left the country after the Islamic Revolution (when universities were closed for several years) and lived in several Western countries, including Canada, where he studied music composition at Carleton University in Ottawa. His main motivation for leaving Iran was not political, he said; it was to further his musical studies.
Mr. Kalhor met members of Brooklyn Rider in 2000 at Tanglewood, where they took part in the cellist Yo-Yo Ma’s Silk Road Project. The quartet’s members are Colin Jacobsen and Jonathan Gandelsman, violinists; Nicholas Cords, violist; and Eric Jacobsen, cellist.
“Silent City” is the result of eight years of learning and experimentation, Mr. Cords said. “We enjoyed each other on first meeting and were fascinated with his world, but at the beginning wouldn’t have dreamed of making this recording together.”
The beginning of “Silent City” is improvised, a skill that is integral to the Persian classical music tradition, in which performers base their extemporizing on a collection of melodies and motifs known as the Radif. Western classical musicians rarely improvise, but Brooklyn Rider honed its skills with Mr. Kalhor; Mr. Cords and Colin Jacobsen received further instruction while visiting Iran in 2004. “The improvisation feels like an outgrowth of our friendship,” Mr. Cords said.
The men of Brooklyn Rider also had to learn how to adapt to playing the quarter tones and modes common in Middle Eastern music.
Mr. Kalhor is well versed in cross-cultural partnerships. His many successful musical collaborations include Ghazal, a duo with the Indian sitarist Shujaat Husain Khan. The sitar and kamancheh work well together, Mr. Kalhor said, largely because of the “affinity of the two cultures” and their many historical connections.
He has also performed with the New York Philharmonic and at the Mostly Mozart Festival. On Oct. 18 he will appear at Carnegie Hall. He said he rarely performed in Iran because of the bureaucracy involved in organizing a concert.
Mr. Kalhor, who has incorporated techniques like pizzicatos (not traditionally performed on the kamancheh) into his music, insists on a deep understanding of the musical cultures he works with. “Nowadays with a lot of musical collaborations and fusion music, it’s obvious that the performers really don’t know each other’s culture,” he said.
Sometimes, he added, “I think the producers just put four different guys from different cultures in a studio and want them to jam. This is not going to be my approach.”
As an Iranian musician who frequently performs for Western audiences, Mr. Kalhor, who has lived in New York (he returned to Tehran in 2003), said that he inevitably faced political questions. But he stressed that he was a cultural ambassador, not a politician. “We are always in the middle of politics,” he said, laughing. “We go to a concert and boom, a political question about the government, about the presi-dent, etc.”
For that reason, his ensemble with the celebrated Iranian singer Muhammad Reza Shajarian, the singer Homayoun Shajarian and the lute player Hussein Alizadeh is called the Masters of Persian Music, not Iranian Music. “For political reasons, I think we didn’t want people to think it has anything to do with today’s politics of Iran or the U.S. or any culture for that matter,” Mr. Kalhor explained, adding that the culture of Persia (which was renamed Iran in 1935) goes back much further. “When we say Persian we don’t mean today’s Iranian borders.”
Traditional Persian melodies inspire much of “Silent City,” a recording, whose pieces are composed and arranged by Mr. Kalhor, Colin Jacobsen, the violist Ljova and the Iranian santur player Siamak Aghaei. The bassist Jeffrey Beecher, the percussionist Mark Suter and Mr. Aghaei also perform.
The disc opens with “Ascending Bird,” based on a melody (inspired by a mythical tale of a bird trying to fly to the sun) that Mr. Cords and Mr. Jacobsen heard while visiting Iran. It begins with melancholy whispers of melody before exploding into an ecstatic frenzy.
“Parvaz” (Persian for flight), which also explores the soaring-bird theme, features Mr. Kalhor playing the setar (a four-stringed, long-necked wooden Iranian lute), whose bright, jangly line dances with restless fervor above the other strings.
The disc closes with “Beloved, do not let me be discouraged,” whose title is taken from a poem by a 16th-century Turkish writer about ill-fated lovers — an evocative blend of courtly medieval Italian music filtered through a Middle Eastern prism.
Kayhan Kalhor & Brooklyn Rider
ABC Australia October 4, 2008
Review: Silent City BY DOUG SPENCER
The relevant ‘f’’ word fits more failures (some, well-intentioned, others exploitative) than musical successes. Silent
City is, however, a brilliant example of ‘fusion’. Its makers have direct experience of both their very different home-
places: Iran and the USA. Persian classical music has a longer history than the Western kind. Kayhan Kalhor is one of
the most eloquent players of any violin species. He is the supreme exponent of the kamancheh. Brooklyn Rider is a
New York- based string quartet. They met as members of Yo-Yo Ma’s Silk Road Project. Equally apropos are all these
words: new, ancient, refined, earthy, composed, improvisatory, surprising, lucid. The key word is ‘beautiful’.
Kayhan Kalhor and Brooklyn Rider
eMusic September 23, 2008
CD Review: Silent City
You can justifiably call this cross-cultural effort a spinoff of Yo Yo Ma's Silk Road Project. The string quartet with the
quixotic name Brooklyn Rider consists of musicians who first met each other, and Persian fiddler Kayhan Kalhor,
while working in Ma's globetrotting world/chamber music ensemble. Kalhor is a master of the kamancheh, the spike
fiddle of Persian classical music, and has become a primary composer for the Silk Road albums. On "Silent City" he
and his Brooklyn-based colleagues draw freely on their shared loves of traditional Central Asian music and
improvisation - which sounds like a recipe for a mushy, politically correct album of Classical Lite. Instead, the album
sounds like the next step in an evolution that comes from the tradition of Béla Bartók, who tramped around the
Hungarian and Romanian countryside in the early 20th century, recording folk songs and dances and incorporating
them into his own string pieces.
In addition to the bowed Western and Persian strings, "Silent City" also features bass and percussion, and the
combination is used to good effect on the opening cut, "Ascending Bird," an exotic yet accessible work that wouldn't
disappoint fans of Led Zeppelin's "Kashmir." Each of the four tracks offers something slightly different, from the
haunted introspection of the title track, to the plucked sounds of the Iranian setar (a lute that is the ancestor of India's
sitar) on "Parvaz," to the gradually building, almost trance-like ecstasy of the epic "Beloved, do not let me be
discouraged." It's not Persian classical music, and you could reasonably ask if it's Western classical music either - but
part of Brooklyn Rider's mission seems to be to suggest that we redefine what "Western classical music" means in the
Kayhan Kalhor & Brooklyn Rider Spinner.com • September 2, 2008
Giving Voice to ‘Silent City’: Kayhan Kalhor Bridges Tehran and Brooklyn BY STEVE HOCHMAN There are several intriguing angles one could take regarding 'Silent City,' a new album combining the talents of Iranian kamancheh (spike fiddle) virtuoso Kayhan Kalhor with the adventurous American string quartet Brooklyn Rider. An outgrowth of the musicians' experience as part of Yo-Yo Ma's Silk Road Ensemble recordings and tours, this album comes at
a time of ever-increasing tensions and rhetoric between the two countries' governments, a time when suspicion seems to trump reason and a time when more and more artists are seen as ambassadors of their cultures. And the title piece is emotionally stunning, a 29-minute musical Guernica, a threnody for the Kurdish village Hallabja that suffered the 1988 chemical weapons attack by Iraq that left 5,000 dead.
But don't overlook one striking thing about the contents of this album, particularly that title composition: This is
simply utterly remarkable music.
This is not a case of Persian styles adorned with Western strings, or conversely a string quartet with Iranian
music on top of it. Much like compositions of fellow Tehran native Hafez Nazeri discussed in an earlier Around
the World column, this is a true fusion. And it's not just a melding of of cultures and genres but of the musical
minds of the people making it -- which is exactly what Kalhor intended when he conceived the piece.
"I think the best part of any musical encounter is the thinking stage," he says. "Let me give an example: You
listen to a great African musician. You enjoy the music and suddenly you think of what you can do with him or
her in a musical collaboration. This happens to me a lot. I hear a great piece of music somewhere and would
love to picture myself in it! What can I add to it to make it different if I was given the opportunity? Not that it
should be different."
That, he says, was the case with such groundbreaking collaborations as Ghazal (with Indian sitar player
Shujaat Husain Khan), Masters of Persian Music (with vocalists Mohammad Reza Shajarian and Shahram
Nazeri and tar master Hossein Alizadeh), his 2004 'In the Mirror of the Sky' album (with Kurdish lute player Ali
Akbar Moradi) and a featured role on the Kronos Quartet's album 'Caravan.'
Brooklyn Rider Spinner.com • September 2, 2008 page 2 of 3 "The biggest challenge in these cases is to learn about that certain kind of music or musical culture and the
next is how to combine the ideas, technically and sentimentally," he notes.
This was different, though, both on the title piece and on the three others surrounding it: 'Ascending Bird'
(based on a traditional Persian tune and arranged by Rider violinist Colin Jacobsen and guest santur player
Siamak Aghaei), 'Parvaz' (a 2000 composition by Kalhor) and 'Beloved, Do Not Let Me Be Discouraged'
(written by Jacobsen, inspired in part by the medieval Persian romantic tale 'Layla and Majnun').
"With Brooklyn Rider, I didn't really have to picture myself in the music. We had played many pieces together,
by different composers, and they knew my music better than other musicians I had worked with." Which
means the "thinking stage" of this was a little different than he had experienced, with an element of freedom
he'd never really had before.
"After playing together for a long time, I think one of the elements that we were after was the use of freedom
and improvisation," he says of arranging the music for him and Brooklyn Rider, supplemented by bass player
Jeff Beecher and percussionist Mark Suter. "How to bring that to a piece played by an ensemble of six players
and not make it chaotic was the question. I'm not very keen on jamming without direction, so I tried to find one
and explain it to the others. And for even more direction, I decided to finish the piece with a pre-written --
totally arranged -- movement to bring everything together. To me, the piece is like a story, and it has a certain
ending, which was very intentional."
And that means, to him, that he came up with something that on one hand is specific to the musicians
involved, but on the other transcends even that -- something that is designed to have a life in other settings.
This, in fact, is not the first presentation of it. It was commissioned by Carnegie Hall and debuted at
Tanglewood Music Center in 2006 with Kahlor leading an eight-piece string ensemble in a 20-minute version,
as can be heard and downloaded here. But the Brooklyn Rider version takes the ideas to new places, and
even more expansion of the ideas is to be expected in the shows the musicians will be doing in the U.S. next
spring, following the Silk Road Ensemble appearance Sept. 27 at the Hollywood Bowl, featuring Kalhor.
"The personality and deep understanding of the players made this particular recording very special, although
it could also be approached by other instrumentalists if explained well," he says. "For me, 'Silent City' is an
idea more than a piece, and that idea can be used in many formats with many other combinations."
Brooklyn Rider Spinner.com • September 2, 2008 page 3 of 3 And that, arguably, is where the art and craft of this piece meets the emotions behind and evoked by it. Not
only does the music work in different combinations of players, but it also works for a great variety of listeners.
Kalhor wrote it about a very specific occurrence but has encountered people from different places, who
endured different situations yet found great personal resonance in this music.
"As humans, we share many similarities in our lives: death, catastrophe, injustice, unhappiness, aggression
and wars at one side, and happiness, friends, kindness, love and peace at the other," he says. "All are
emotions we feel and will greatly be affected by. I don't think it's hard for a person from New Orleans to relate
and understand the suffering of an Iraqi or an Afghan or a Rwandan, or vice versa. They might be from
different cultures, but to lose a loved one -- to accident or human aggression or a wrong decision or political
difficulty -- is the same everywhere. Unfortunately, many social, political, racial factors are trying to separate
us as humans. But I think at the end of the day and despite all of the negative propaganda, we remain
humans and would unfortunately remember it most when something terrible happens."
Do not take this as a political statement, though, a commentary against -- or for -- the Iranian government or
U.S. policy or any such thing.
"My personal goal and wish is to make people realize that a citizen of any country does not represent their
politicians, nor should they," Kahlor insists. "And to say that musicians are cultural ambassadors of any
culture, not the political one. I come from an old culture that has offered many values to the human society,
and I want to share that with everyone through music.
"Unfortunately, most of the time I have to get engaged in political discussion with friends or reporters about
the political situation in Iran or the relationship between our governments -- not our countries -- and the
images that the Western media depicts from today's Iran does not really help me make my points."
Make what you will of it, then. Or make nothing of it, and simply enjoy it for what it is: great music.
Kayhan Kalhor & Brooklyn Rider The Scotsman • August 30, 2008
Kayhan Kalhor and Brooklyn Rider: Silent City BY MICHAEL CHURCH The city explicitly referred to is the Kurdish village of Halabja, which Saddam Hussein half exterminated, but we are
meant to take it as meaning all the cities throughout history that have been destroyed, either by human actions or by
natural disaster.
The group performing this work has a fascinating provenance, in that they were first brought together by globe-trotting
cellist Yo-Yo Ma as part of his Silk Road Project. Kalhor is a virtuoso on the kemancheh spike-fiddle, and spends more
of his time in New York than in his native Iran, and he's become a tireless innovator and composer for combinations of
Eastern and Western musicians.
With a string quartet plus a percussionist setting off the kemancheh, the sound-world of this work is subtle; its
alternation between furious energy and slow-moving harmonic shifts makes for an emotionally powerful hour.
Kayhan Kalhor & Brooklyn Rider
Strings Magazine August 14, 2008
CD Review: Spins of the Week BY GREG CAHILL
Passport (In a Circle 001) by Brooklyn Rider
Silent City (World Village 468078) by Kayhan Kalhor and Brooklyn Rider
Reminiscent of the more established but no less adventurous Turtle Island and Kronos quartets, Brooklyn Rider is a
gifted string quartet that mixes the classics with the contemporary to create music that is emotionally exhilarating and
intellectually stimulating. The quartet—Johnny Gandelsman and Colin Jacobsen, violins; Nicholas Cords, viola; Eric
Jacobsen, cello—is capable of creating a lush reading of Debussy’s String Quartet in G minor one moment and an
electrifying chamber-jazz spin on rock en español experimentalists Café Tacuba the next. That latter tune, “La Muerte
Chiquita,” arranged by contemporary Argentine composer Osvaldo Golijov, appears on Passport, one of the year’s best
chamber-music recordings. It is matched by five scintillating arrangements of Armenian folk songs, a pair of songs by
the Russian violist and composer Lev “Ljova” Zhurbin, and a single original composition by Brooklyn Rider violinist
Colin Jacobsen. This is some of the most vibrant music I’ve heard this year, of any genre, and it arrives from a group
that’s been waiting in the wings for a few years. The notion that Brooklyn Rider has arrived is supported by the
simultaneous release of Silent City, their stunning collaboration with Kurdish-Iranian kamancheh, or spike-fiddle,
master Kayhan Kalhor. The group’s rich timbre and ability to handle the demands of Kahlor’s portamento-laden
Persian modes and shifting tempos makes this challenging music a real thrill ride. Obviously, the group’s longtime
association with Yo-Yo Ma’s Silk Road Ensemble (they’ve participated in three Sony Classical recordings with that
ensemble) has helped prepare the Brooklyn Rider for this stunning world-music summit meeting.
Highly recommended.
Kayhan Kalhor and Brooklyn Rider
eMusic October 25, 2008
CD Review: Passport BY JUSTIN DAVIDSON
Those of us who remember when portable music meant a shoulder-mounted boom box might also recall a time when
the Kronos Quartet were the only string quartet to play music from territories west of Los Angeles, east of the Volga or
south of the Mediterranean. The machines have shrunk, but string quartets have expanded their territory. Today's young
ensembles don't even need to plunge into global internationalism; they've grown out of it. The string quartet Brooklyn
Rider came together for Yo-Yo Ma's Silk Road Project, so its interests lie well beyond the borough. Its first recording
was Silent City, a bewitching collaboration with the Persian fiddler Kayhan Kalhor. Passport, the group's almost
contemporaneous second disc, is just as itinerant and equally seductive. It makes a fairly random assortment of cultural
stops, from Yerevan to Mexico City to Forest Hills, Queens, all linked by a distinctive Brooklyn swing. The album
opens with a suite of Armenian folk songs transcribed for string quartet by the priestly ethnomusicologist Komitas
Vardapet and performed with muscular conviction and fragile wistfulness. It feels like a small hop to "La Muerte
Chiquita," a ballad by the Mexican pop band Café Tacuba, which the composer Osvaldo Golijov has transformed
through the application of perfumed lyricism and whispering harmonics. The players of Brooklyn Rider are also
members of an elastic society of New York-based musicians who treat the world's musical traditions as if they were
separated by little more than a couple of subway stops. Another fellow traveler is Ljova, a violist and composer who
specializes in what might be termed Eastern-European avant-folk and who wrote "Crosstown," a lovely nocturne with a
plaintive sax-like solo above a bluesy plucked bass. But the disc's keystone work is the 14-minute "Brooklesca" by the
group's violinist Colin Jacobsen. It has the feeling of a shape-shifting, key-switching, rhythm-bending jam session, shot
through with Persian motifs and Gypsy bravura. The beat is rock & roll-solid, the improvisational style elastic and
relaxed, and the inventiveness assured. Jacobsen and his quartet mates play it as if the music were in their blood stream,
or at least in the atmosphere of their heterogeneous borough.