Renowned Iranian musician/composer Keivan Saket is scheduled to perform in several concerts in Germany during the first half of 2015.
Saket is busy these days composing several music albums, in which he either plays solo or performs with an orchestra, MNA reported.
It will be one of the busiest years for Saket as he puts it. “First I have a trip to Germany to hold some concerts there. According to the program, accompanied by the German symphony orchestra, I will have performances in three different cities.”
Later, in the summer, a group of German musicians will visit Iran to hold a concert here, “which will be an interesting experience for me as well,” he added. “We are also preparing for a big concert of a different kind, in Tehran in May, the details of which will be soon announced.”
Saket is the fastest tar and setar (traditional Iranian instruments) player in Iran. He has always believed in introducing Iranian traditional music to the world. One of his ways of doing so was to promote through his shows what Iranian instruments were capable of playing.
To demonstrate this, he tried to perform well-known pieces from classical composers like Beethoven, Mozart, Paganini, Vivaldi, Strauss, and more. This mission seemed impossible at first; tar was played with plectrum and most of western classical pieces with the violin - a bowed string instrument. This meant that a tar player had to have a very quick plectrum to keep a rapid repetition of one note, or a tremolo. And yet, Saket was the only one with an impossibly blistering speed.
Album Releases
Along with his traditional albums, Saket released two modern albums that once again stunned everyone. In his albums, he performed extremely fast and complex pieces like ‘The Flight of the Bumblebee’. His astonishing performance at the International Music Exposition in France in 2006, showed the significance of tar and setar globally.
Keivan Saket was born in 1960 in Mashad. In 1989, he joined the Aref Ensemble under the leadership of the late musician/composer Parviz Meshkatian; Saket’s collaboration with the ensemble continued steadily into 1996; during this period, they released several albums and performed extensively throughout Iran and abroad.
Around the same time, Saket established the Vaziri Orchestra. The orchestra’s primary goal was to bring about a revival of the traditional style of Iranian master Col. Alinaghi Vaziri.
Together, Saket and the Vaziri Orchestra have performed on a regular basis in Iran; their works include pieces such as ‘Ey Vatan’ (Oh, Homeland), which is a dedication to the legacy of Vaziri.
