Two of Iran’s most celebrated musical artists return to Vancouver after a four-year absence
Date/Time: Oct 28 2018, 7:00 pm to 9:00 pm
Vancouver, The Orpheum | Event calendarCost: $65.00
Find tickets: here
Legendary Iranian Sufi singer Shahram Nazeri and his son, musical director Hafez Nazeri have created a unique experience for audiences, showcasing an unprecedented array of the finest practitioners of Persian and Western classical music, a show that drew a record-breaking multi-generational audience of over 300,000 during their recent tour in Iran.
Shahram and Hafez Nazeri constitute one of the most influential families in contemporary music. Together they have helped bring Persian/Sufi music to the Western audiences, toured the world and released recordings that have topped the Classical Charts. Shahram Nazeri is one of Iran's most beloved singers, dubbed the "Persian Nightingale" (The New York Times) and "Iran’s Pavarotti" (Christian Science Monitor). He was the first vocalist to set Rumi’s poetry to Persian music thirty-five years ago, establishing a tradition of Sufi music within Persian classical music and introducing Western musical audiences to both Sufism and to the poetry of Rumi. He was awarded France’s Chevalier des Arts et Lettres medal for his lifetime achievements in Iranian traditional music. Son Hafez Nazeri is Iran’s most influential and admired young composer and “a performer with magnetic, pop-star appeal" (The New Yorker). With his album Untold he became the first Middle Eastern artist to hit No. 1 on Billboard’s Classical charts.
Featured musicians include versatile Kurdish Percussionist Hussein Zahawy on daf (Kurdish frame drum), whose work has been featured on the Kingdom of Heaven (2005) soundtrack and with Sami Yusuf and Kadim al-Saher; Farhad Safari on innovative new percussion; cellist Felix Fan, who has worked with Yo-Yo Ma, Philip Glass, Gil Shaham and Janos Starker, at venues such as Carnegie Hall, The Kennedy Center, Musikverein and Royal Festival Hall; violinist Conrad Harris who has performed internationally and champions new music as a member of FLUX Quartet and violin duo String Noise to name but a few of his involvements, and multi-faceted violist Liuh-Wen Ting, who has collaborated with the Lincoln Center Chamber Music Society, Manhattan String Quartet, Cassatt Quartet, and the Rumi Symphony Project.
The concert will also feature two female vocal performers—an unusual choice for a work of Iranian origin, considering that Iran has prohibited women from performing solo in public since 1979. Russian-born soprano Maria Sokolovsky has enjoyed a prolific career not only as a classical singer, but also as a jazz and world music singer, and is the founder of New York-based ensemble, DODO Orchestra, which performs a captivating mixture of international retro music. Also Russian-born, mezzo-soprano Anna Yelizarova has performed over 25 opera roles throughout the world with companies like dell'Arte Opera Ensemble, Opera Manhattan, New York Lyric Opera Theater, Intermezzo Opera Festival; sang at Carnegie Hall with Pacific Encore, and was a guest artist at the Midsummer Mozart Festival.
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