Itinerant Music,
Myriad Encounters

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. Kayhan Kalhor, an uncontested master of this tradition, joins Kiya Tabassian and Behnam Samani on a journey through an immense musical universe.

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. Kayhan Kalhor, an uncontested master of this tradition, joins Kiya Tabassian and Behnam Samani on a journey through an immense musical universe.

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. Kayhan Kalhor, an uncontested master of this tradition, joins Kiya Tabassian and Behnam Samani on a journey through an immense musical universe.

In Mania, the musician is face to face with the unknown. Here the musician is literally playing with sounds at every moment and over time. The music that emerges can be unpredictable and, in this case, extraordinary in both form and content. The instruments and the language of these instruments lend the music a recognizably Persian flavor, but it is far from what is known as classical Persian music. Let’s simply call it music. 

In Mania, the musician is face to face with the unknown. Here the musician is literally playing with sounds at every moment and over time. The music that emerges can be unpredictable and, in this case, extraordinary in both form and content. The instruments and the language of these instruments lend the music a recognizably Persian flavor, but it is far from what is known as classical Persian music. Let’s simply call it music. 

In Mania, the musician is face to face with the unknown. Here the musician is literally playing with sounds at every moment and over time. The music that emerges can be unpredictable and, in this case, extraordinary in both form and content. The instruments and the language of these instruments lend the music a recognizably Persian flavor, but it is far from what is known as classical Persian music. Let’s simply call it music.

Djalaleddine Rumi (1207-1273), with his body of work encompassing over 100,000 lines of verse, left us an immutable treasure that reflects a refined and luminous understanding of the world.

Marco Beasley, a specialist in Renaissance music, joins forces with Constantinople to celebrate, in music, a bridge that Leonardo da Vinci designed in 1502. The longest and boldest bridge of the time, it was to span the Bosporus and thus link Europe and Asia. But it was never built; the plans, however, were preserved in the artist’s archives. Five centuries later, Tabassian re-imagines this bridge with the help of 16th- and 17th-century works from the manuscript archives of the national libraries of Istanbul and Florence.

Marco Beasley, a specialist in Renaissance music, joins forces with Constantinople to celebrate, in music, a bridge that Leonardo da Vinci designed in 1502. The longest and boldest bridge of the time, it was to span the Bosporus and thus link Europe and Asia. But it was never built; the plans, however, were preserved in the artist’s archives. Five centuries later, Tabassian re-imagines this bridge with the help of 16th- and 17th-century works from the manuscript archives of the national libraries of Istanbul and Florence.