On occasion of the 8th anniversary of launching HarmonyTalk Online Journal on 6 April 2012, Reza Ziaei, master luthier and researcher on classical music instruments (violin family), announced that the first phase of the project to improve Qeychak has borne fruit. The new instrument would feature a bowl of ribs and the material used for the surface would be wooden. Carrying out the second phase of the project took more than 7 years engaging the new members of Reza Ziaei’s Workshop. In this phase, new researches were conducted from different aspects on the Qeychak and the modern versions of the instrument which were introduced previously by other instrument makers. The available versions of the instrument were studied in terms of their weak and strong technical features.

Payam Taghadossi (born in 1989) started his musical education at the age of 4 years with Monika Scherbaum in Bregenz (Austria). At the Conservatory Feldkirch he joined the class of Imke Frank and Martin Merker. Later he studied in Zurich (Switzerland) with Thomas Grossenbacher and Christian Proske, where he 2011 graduated as a Bachelor of Arts in Music Performance. Two years later as the student of Rafael Rosenfeld he received his Master of Arts in Music Performance diploma and later graduated as a Master of Arts in spezialized Music Performance in 2016 from the Hochschule für Musik Basel FHNW.

Reza Vohdani is a renowned name among tar (traditional Iranian instrument) players, especially within the Iranian music community that values the meticulous practice and teaching of traditional music. While Vohdani honed his skills in music theory and tar playing under the guidance of masters like Ali-Naghi Vaziri, Ali-Akbar Shahnazi, Hossein Dehlavi, and Ahmad Forutan-Rad, it is his unwavering dedication to studying, documenting, and teaching the Iranian classical music repertoire that has solidified his prominence in the field. Recently, Vohdani’s family decided to make his preserved works accessible to the wider art and music community. In this regard, The Persian-language newspaper ‘Iran’ spoke with Sadjad Pourghanad, a musician, university instructor, and music researcher, who shared his opinion into the project, as detailed in the interview below.

Bahman Rajabi, the renowned tonbak (Persian goblet drum) player and educator, passed away at his home at the age of 86 due to a heart condition. He was the founder of a distinctive school of tonbak playing, and his teaching methods have been widely used by instructors of the instrument for decades..

Daf is one of the percussion instruments associated with the Kurdistan region of Iran, which has a special place in Iranian music. In the past, animal skin was used for the drum head, but now most of the tambourines in the market are made with artificial skin, which are designed with various decorations.

One of the most popular terms used by Iranian instrumentalists is the existence or a lack of musical “sense”. Both musicians and fans of music consider having “sense” while playing music as an important principle to the extent that they use it vis-a-vis having technique.

Discussions and research have been conducted on the harmonization of “dastgah” and melodies in Iranian music, and several books have been published on this topic, including “Armenian Music of Iran” by Ali Naghi Vaziri, “Harmony of Iranian Music” by Farhad Fakhreddini, and “Harmony of Iranian Music” by Ali Ghamssari. A master’s thesis titled “Presenting a Solution for Harmonizing Based on the Structure of Tritone Intervals” was written by Atefeh EinAli in 2014. Additionally, the invention and use of “Even Harmony” by Morteza Hannaneh should be mentioned.

Tehran Flute Choir is a 40-member orchestra of Iran’s best flutists; Iran’s best flutists? Yes! If you write down the names of the greatest Iranian flute players who participate at concerts and contribute to academic centers in Iran, you will see that most of them are among the choir’s members.

Santour:
Nine-bridge and twelve-bridge Sanours were both used until the early Pahlavi dynasty. However, as Faramarz Payvar devised new methods for playing the nine-bridge Sanour, this variety of the instrument which was hammered by felted sticks became popular.

Music as an art has its own special history; emergence of a singer, of an instrumentalist and then the emergence of the strong character of a composer covers three significant phases of the art of music. With the emergence of composer which was simultaneous with the emergence of the language of music, this art managed to offer a domain for criticism for its composer; a procedure which led to a magnificent variety and evolution in musical production. Even though the conflicts between singers and instrumentalists have not met their end in the Iranian society and while singers can achieve high, instrumentalists have yet to play behind curtains . In a special era, with the efforts of musicians such as Ali Naghi Vaziri (1887-1979) and Rouhollah Khaleghi (1906-1965), glimmers of a composing era started to glow bearing fruit in Khaleghi’s achievement as Iran’s first professional composer. Khaleghi made his reputation as a composer while Vaziri deserved to pioneer this path. By then Vaziri was well-known as a Tar player.