Background
Kayhan Kalhor was born in Kermanshah but grew up in Tehran.
Kayhan Kalhor was born in Kermanshah but grew up in Tehran.
Continuing his music studies under various teachers, he studied in the Persian radif tradition and also travelled to study in the northern part of Khorasan province, where music traditions have Kurdish and Turkic influences as well as Persian.
He is from a Kurdish family. He began studying music at age seven. By age thirteen he was playing in the National Orchestra of Radio and Television of Iran.
At a musical conservatory in Tehran around age 20 Kalhor worked under the directorship of Mohammad-Reza Lotfi who is from the north-east of Iran.
Kalhor also travelled in the northwestern provinces of Iran. He later moved to Rome and Ottawa to study European classical music
He is a graduate of the music program at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada. Kayhan Kalhor has a wide range of musical influences, uses several musical instruments, and crosses cultural borders with his work, but at his center he is an intense player of the Iranian violin.
In his playing Kalhor often pins Iranian classical music structures to the rich folk modes and melodies of the Kurdish tradition of Iran.
Kalhor has composed works for and played alongside the famous Iranian vocalists Mohammad Reza Shajarian and Shahram Nazeri. He has also composed and performed with the Indian sitar player Shujaat Husain Khan and Indian tabla player Swapan Chaudhuri in the group Ghazal. Kalhor"s 2004 album In the mirror of the Sky was a joint venture with the Kurdish Iranian lute player Ali Akbar Moradi.
His 2006 album The Wind is a collaboration with the Turkish baglama virtuoso Erdal Erzincan, with both Turkish and Persian pieces performed.
At other times Kalhor has collaborated with Yo-Yo Ma"s Silk Road Project Ensemble in the United States of America and the Kronos Quartet. Kalhor now resides in United States of America and has been commercially successful in United States of America over the past decade.
In 2010 Kalhor composed "I was there", which was based "on a melody attributed to Ziryab, a ninth-century Persian Kurdish musician", for a Maya Beiser concert. This piece was performed by Kalhor alongside Maya Beiser, the renowned cellist Bassam Saba, an oud player, and two percussionists, Glen Velez and Matt Kilmer.