Hossein Alizadeh

Hossein Alizadeh has long been acknowledged as one of Iran's most important, influential, and evocative composers and instrumentalists of the Persian classical tradition. His instruments of choice are Persia's ancient plucked lutes: the tar and the setar. To this stable, Alizadeh has added the shurangiz, a six-stringed lute. Although the shurangiz was invented about fifty years ago, Alizadeh has modified the instrument to the point of making it his own creation.

Born in Tehran in 1951, he graduated from the University of Tehran's School of Music in 1975 with a bachelor's degree in composition and performance. After completing his intitial studies, Alizadeh went on to be the conductor and a soloist for the Iranian National Radio and Television Orchestra, and went on to found the Aref Ensemble, a group dedicated to the promotion and advancement of Iranian classical music. In the early 1980's, Alizadeh went on to study composition and musicology at the University of Berlin.

An extraordinarily gifted composer, Alizadeh has written the film scores for some of Iran's best-known "new wave" films, including Gabbeh, Turtles Can Fly, and A Time for Drunken Horses. He has also taught at the University of Tehran, the Tehran Music Conservatory, and the California Institute of the Arts.

Currently, Alizadeh spends much of his time touring the world with two other legendary Iranian artists, vocalist Mohammad Reza Shajarian and kemencheh virtuoso Kayhan Kalhor. The three, plus Shajarian's son and protégé Homayoun Shajarian, perform together as the Masters of Persian Music, and the group has earned two Grammy nominations for their albums Without You and Faryad (both on World Village). —Anastasia Tsioulcas