A collaboration between Early Music Vancouver, the Pacific Baroque Festival, the Victoria Conservatory of Music, and Christ Church Cathedral in Victoria.
Kalhor & Tabassian In Dialogue
Sunday, June 5, 2022, at 4:00 p.m. - St. Andrew's Presbyterian Church

From dawn to dusk, music reigns among the stars of Persian civilization. The traditional music of Iran, unique to the Orient, is the fruit of a mystical heritage with a fascinating capacity for constant regeneration. For this unique concert, Kayhan Kalhor, an uncontested master of this tradition, joins Kiya Tabassian on a journey through an immense musical universe. Carrying on tradition while uncovering the future, they make poetry that sings of times both old and new, and contribute to a culture that is in full swing.
The intensely spiritual and emotional improvisations of Kalhor and Tabassian, steeped in the traditional music of Iran, are said to bring listeners to a trance-like state. The ancestry of the setar can be traced to the ancient tanbur of pre-Islamic Persia. It is made from thin mulberry wood and its fingerboard has more than 20 moveable frets. Setar is literally translated as “three strings”; in its present form, however, it has four strings. Because of its delicacy and intimate sonority, the setar is the preferred instrument of Sufi mystics.
” Rather than a duel, the two setarists’ ninety or so uninterrupted minutes onstage turned out to be a clinic in how to build something transcendent.”
- New York Music Daily
Presenting in partnership with with the Early Music Society of The Islands
PURCHASING TICKETS
GETTING TO ST ANDREW'S
PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH
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