Hafez Nazeri’s album ‘Rumi Symphony Project: Untold’ was unveiled on Saturday (March 7) at a ceremony in Tehran’s Milad Tower conference hall.
Hafez, son of the grandmaster of Persian traditional music Shahram Nazeri, who had recorded the album long ago in the US, said at the event that having gone through lots of ups and downs, “I am so happy to see the efforts in producing the album were not in vain, and the people of my country can eventually listen to it.”
Brought up in a family which inspired him to step into the music world, Hafez has spent 15 years out of Iran, seeking to expand his musical knowledge as well as to introduce Persian music to the world. However, he believes that “there are few Iranian musicians and singers who collaborate with foreign artists or whose albums are sold outside the country.”
Therefore, as a young person who is not even fully known inside Iran, “I, started from zero but having high ambition, undertook an overwhelming project to prepare an album with foreign musicians, the outcome of which was its release last March in the US,” MNA quoted Hafez, 35, as saying.
‘Untold’ is the result of Hafez’s collaboration with an orchestra of all-star foreign classical musicians, all giants in their special fields and many of them Grammy Award winners. He said this is surely “a great honor for me, and moreover, it can be considered a national pride as it helps us introduce our rich music to the world.”
Distributor
Another interesting point about ‘Untold’ is that it is the first album produced by Sony Classics in the Middle East.
Maestro Shahram Nazeri pointed to the album distributor and said: “The fact that it is the first time an Iranian work managed to catch their eye for production and international distribution is of great significance since they work only with professionals and never risk taking on mediocre work.”
He noted that he cannot judge the album and state whether it is good or bad, but “I can claim that, unlike many imitation works found in the market these days, it is an original album, rooted in the heart of the artists involved.” And whenever artists produce, and not imitate, a piece of art, their work should be respected.
Hafez Nazeri is an Iranian composer of Kurdish descent. In March 2014, ‘Untold’, a chart-topping album featuring 38 Grammy Award-winning musicians was released. The result of over 5,000 hours of recording, the album is an attempt to represent “the splendor of all creation.” Steeped in both the improvisatory tradition of his native Iran and western classical music’s rich harmonic strictures, Hafez takes a boundary-crossing approach, balancing the two and forging a new sonic universe altogether.
In the words of the composer, “this is the first cycle of my Rumi Symphony Project and portrays the story of our universe from the dawn of time until the very end, through my eyes. It is composed of four distinct chapters that represent the cycles of our existence, and our journey through the seven stages of enlightenment.”
