Internationally acclaimed Iranian musician Kayhan Kalhor accompanied by Turkish baglama player Erdal Erzincan will hold two concerts in the US in late November.
The duet performances are slated for November 20-22 in San Francisco and Saratoga, California, Honaronline reported.
An instrumentalist, composer and master of classical Kurdish and Persian music, Kalhor, 52, is known for his brilliant performances on the traditional instrument Kamancheh (knee fiddle) and creating a unique mix of classical Persian music with folk tunes of Iran’s Kurdistan region.
A virtuoso, Kalhor has been nominated for the Grammy award thrice and has performed abroad on scores of occasions.
While he has held several concerts with numerous world-renowned musicians and ensembles, however, his collaboration with Erzincan has lasted for over 15 years and the duo has participated in numerous concerts worldwide. They also share an album ‘The Wind’ released in 2006.
“I have never worked with people who are far removed from Iranian culture. For example, if I am working with Turkish musicians, I make sure that we play two musical styles that belong to the same family. I believe that Iranian and Turkish music are like twins that have grown up in two different families. They look very similar but each has a different accent and character,” Kalhor said.
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On his cooperation with Erzincan, he said that he came to know him just a month before they recorded their first piece. “I went to Turkey a few times and talked about our musical styles and that’s how our cooperation started, and now we are very good friends. Apart from being a musician, he is a great man as well,” he wrote in his Instagram feed.
Kalhor believes his best duet performance is with Erzincan.
“We are so close that when I am working with him it is like one person is playing two instruments. I haven’t had this experience with any other musician. We are so familiar with each other’s minds that when we sit to play together, we do not need to even look at each other. I am very pleased with this collaboration,” he added.
Erzincan, 44, is a Turkish folk music musician, composer, and singer. He has conducted research on the ‘selpe’ method, by which the baglama, a stringed musical instrument shared by various cultures in the Eastern Mediterranean, Near East, and Central Asia regions, is played without a plectrum, similar to the tapping method on the guitar. He has also worked with several Turkish folk musicians and released 14 albums.
