Silk Road Ensemble Artists

Kayhan Kalhor
kamancheh/composer (b. 1963, Iran)

"Over the years I've tried to share my music and to share the culture of which I am a part. With the Silk Road Project I am learning about other cultures myself. I usually don't get this kind of opportunity, to meet musicians from other cultures and travel together, talk, become friends and learn about their musical ideas."

Kayhan Kalhor is an internationally acclaimed virtuoso on the kamancheh (Persian spiked fiddle). His performances of Persian music and his many collaborations have attracted audiences around the globe. Born in Tehran, Iran, he began his musical studies at the age of seven. At thirteen, he was invited to work with the National Orchestra of Radio and Television of Iran, where he performed for five years. When he was seventeen he began working with the Shayda Ensemble of the Chavosh Cultural Center, the most prestigious arts organization in Iran at the time. He has traveled extensively throughout Iran, studying the music of its many regions, in particular those of Khorason and Kordestan.

Kalhor has toured the world as a soloist with various ensembles and orchestras including the New York Philharmonic, Orchestre National de Lyon. He is co-founder of the renowned ensembles Dastan, Ghazal: Persian & Indian Improvisations and Masters of Persian Music. Kalhor has composed works for Iran’s most renowned vocalists, Mohammad Reza Shajarian and Shahram Nazeri, and he has performed and recorded with Iran’s greatest instrumentalists. Kalhor has composed music for television and film and was most recently featured on the soundtrack of Francis Ford Copolla’s Youth Without Youth in a score he collaborated on with Osvaldo Golijov. In 2004, Kalhor was invited by American composer John Adams to give a solo recital at Carnegie Hall as part of his Perspectives Series, and in the same year he participated in the Mostly Mozart Festival at Lincoln Center on a double bill with the Mozart Requiem. Kalhor is a founding member of Yo-Yo Ma’s Silk Road Ensemble and his compositions appear on all three of the Ensemble’s albums. Three of his recent recordings have been nominated for Grammys. His newest CD, Silent City with Brooklyn Rider, will be released on the World Village label in September 2008.