Classical Music Festival Opens in Roudaki

The second Iranian Classic Music Festival opened Friday at Roudaki Hall in south Tehran. This year’s edition of the festival presents Iranian classical music in different categories such as solo performance, trio performance and orchestra among others so that those interested in Persian traditional music can get a better insight into the methods of presenting it, IRNA reported. On the first night of the week-long event, five groups and a solo artist staged their performance including ‘Jav’ music group led by Siavash Kamkar; ney musician Zaman Kheiri; the trio of Farshad Saremi (on kamancheh), Kourosh Matin (santur) and Kourosh Danayi (tonbak); duet of Behnaz Behnamnia (oud) and Nazanin Pedarsani (tonbak); duet of vocalist Mojtaba Asgari and Ali Kazemi (tar); and Barafshan music group headed by Haman Khalili. All the performers and groups delivered their pieces in various musical modal system of traditional Persian music known as ‘dastgah’. A dastgah is a melody type that a performer uses as the basis of an improvised piece. Most scholars separate the traditional Persian music into 12 dastgahs including Segah, Chahargah, Rast-Panjgah, Shur, Abu Ata, Dashti, Afshari, Bayat-e Kord, Bayat-e Esfahan, Mahur, Homayun and Nava. The festival will run through December 15.