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Pasadena Weekly, Concert Preview >>
The Passion Rumi
Father-and-son musical team Shahram and Hafez Nazeri bring 800-year-old poet into modern East-meets-West context
By Bliss Bowen
“I play this living music for my host,” wrote 13th-century Sufi poet Rumi. “Everything today is for the host.”
As spiritually attuned as he was, it's doubtful that Rumi, who died in 1273, foresaw just how far his often ecstatic poetry would travel. Intellectual yet romantic, celebrating freedom of and from the self, it has been translated into at least a dozen languages and remains in print in various collections around the world.
It is also a fertile source of inspiration for musicians, including the Rumi Symphony Project, a collaborative effort between members of the LA Philharmonic and several Persian artists. The latter group includes celebrated Iranian Kurdish classical vocalist Shahram Nazeri and his son, Hafez Nazeri, who has created a cycle of compositions inspired by and honoring Rumi. They're world premiere Friday is presented by the nine-piece Rumi Symphony Project and National Geographic Live.
There's a long tradition of Persian singers translating works of mystical poets like Hafez into music. But Shahram Nazeri, who grew up in Iran and was dubbed “the Persian nightingale” by The New York Times, was one of the first to garner global attention placing Rumi's words in modern classical contexts in the 1970s. He has since been honored for his contributions to modern Persian classical and Sufi music by the United Nations and Iran's Ministry of Culture, and has also received UCLA's Living Legend Award.
Intense and ambitious, his LA-based son Hafez has been trained since the age of 3 as a vocalist and instrumentalist (on tanbour, daf and setar, or Iranian lute). He cites Bartók as well as his father among his influences — and, not surprisingly, the Internet, an intrinsically modern vehicle that has introduced him to classical music as well as jazz and African music. Exposure to Western music nurtured an abiding love of harmony that is evident throughout “The Passion of Rumi,” an elegant, sometimes brooding fusion of Persian and Western instruments, styles and sounds that the Nazeris recently released on QuarterTone Records.
That harmonious blend is the musical representation of not only Rumi's transcendent themes, but also Hafez Nazeri's hopes for a peaceful future; he has been quoted as saying he hopes to be “the voice of a free and borderless generation.” Friday's concert — which marks only the beginning of a cycle he pledges to continue for years — marks a commendable attempt to bring together East and West, past and present, on common musical ground.
Rumi Symphony Project, featuring Shahram Nazeri and Hafez Nazeri, debuts Cycle Number One at 8 p.m. Friday at Walt Disney Concert Hall, 111 S. Grand Ave., Los Angeles; $35-$150.
Tickets available through Ticketmaster: (213) 227-9291.
For concert hall info, call (213) 972-7211. www.myspace.com/hafeznazeri . 08/16/07 >> go there
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