Kayhan Kalhor and Erdal Erzincan duo has given concerts in various countries.
Iranian musical master Kayhan Kalhor and long-time Turkish collaborator Erdal Erzincan will continue their joint work with a concert next week as part of “Istanbul Extraordinary Music Days” (Sıradışı Müzik Günleri).
Kalhor, a master of the kamamcheh, a Persian spiked fiddle, will perform with Erzincan at Istanbul’s Hagia Irene on April 15. The pair will perform pieces from “The Wind,” an album they released together in 2006, as well as offerings from a forthcoming album.
The Iranian musician has worked on the Silk Road project with cellist Yo-Yo Ma and made music for Francis Ford Coppola’s latest film, “Youth Without Youth,” while Erzincan is a student of Turkish folk master Arif Sağ and is one of the leading figures in bağlama-tapping technique. The bağlama is a lute-like instrument that is popular in Anatolian folk music.
Kalhor has been involved in music for more than 30 years, although his collaboration with Erzincan stretches back only to the beginning of the 2000s.
“[Our] improvisation-based duo is very important to me. We are at the bottom of the ladder. I am curious about the level we will be at in 20 years,” said Kalhor.
Kalhor came to Turkey after a 20-year hiatus at the beginning of the 2000s; while visiting, his Dutch concert organizer friend advised him to see Erzincan.
The Iranian musician said he listened to Erzincan’s work and loved it.
“I did not like his general approach in his albums but liked his virtuosity. Because of the commercial concerns of producers, his albums were made up of short melodies without improvisations. I told him that I would like to make works free of commercial concerns,” Kalhor said.
“He was dreaming of the same thing, too, but he didn’t dare do it, thinking that nobody in Turkey would be interested in it. [But] we made three different records in three days in Istanbul with the participation of Ulaş Özdemir. I showed them to the owner of ECM, Manfred Eicher. He liked it very much and released it,” Kalhor said.
The duo has so far given concerts in the Netherlands and Iran, and went on a U.S. tour last year, where their albums and concerts drew great interest.
“I am on stage 90 days a year and travel the world for concerts,” Kalhor said. “The interaction between the cultures that are far from each other was magnificent.”
Kalhor performed a concert with Erzincan on Feb. 19 at CRR Concert hall, and the pair will continue to work on their new album when the Iranian musician comes for next week’s date.
“Long-term works are very important to me. Erzincan and I are such a duo, just like with Yo-Yo Ma and Ali Akbar Moradi. This is not a relation for a project only; we know the families of each other. The growth of our friendship is also seen in our music,” Kolhar said.
“There are 15 works in our common repertoire, as well as hundreds of works that we can improvise on stage,” the musician said.
No release date for the new album has yet been announced.
Three-time Grammy nominee
When he was young, Kalhor worked with a kamancheh master from Khorasan in northeastern Iran before receiving an education at the Tehran Conservatory. Later, he was accepted into the Iranian Radio Television National Orchestra before becoming a musical journeyman, working on projects with other artists from around the world. Along the way, Kalhor first came to Istanbul when he was 18 years old.
Because Iran was embroiled in the war with Iraq during those days, Kalhor sought to continue his musical education in Europe. He spent six months in Istanbul in 1982 while trying to find a way to reach Italy. Before eventually going to Italy and Canada for a classical musical education, however, Kalhor used his Istanbul sojourn to research the country’s folk music.
Kalhor appeared on the international music stage in 1997 in the United States, drawing the attention of Californian Harold Agopian, a world music produce who runs the Traditional Crossroads company.
Kalhor released an album with Agopian called “Scattering Stars Like Dust” before forming a trio with Indian artists Sujat Tan and Svapan Caudri to play ghazals, a poetry form popularized by Sufis in the Subcontinent and often put into musical form.
The trio’s fourth album, “The Rain,” was a Grammy nominee in the Best Ethnic Music Album category in 2004 – the same year he also gave a recital at New York’s Carnegie Hall on the invitation of leading U.S. composer John Adams.
Kalhor also participated as a singer and composer with master cellist Ma in 1998 for the Silk Road project, which brought together musicians from Silk Road countries and sought to establish a bridge between nations.
The April 15 concert will start at 8 p.m. Tickets are available at Biletix