Shahram Nazeri in Concert in Atlanta

Shahram Nazeri, perhaps Iran's best Sufi musician, will be in concert with the Rumi ensemble in Atlanta, Georgia, Saturday March 11, 8 pm at the Atlanta Symphony Hall, Robert Woodruff Art Center, 1293 Peachtree St. Tickets run from $60 to $30 and can be purchased at the Symphony Hall Box office 404-733-5000. For information call 678-357-3572 and 770-205-8051.

See the following for excerpts from an article about him by Michael McDonagh, in Bay Area Reporter, Feb. 16, 2006.
http://www.ebar.com/arts/art_article.php?sec=music&article=107

"Where everything is music"

Musicians Shahram (left) and Hafez Nazeri. Photo: Bahram Daneshvar

"The 26-year-old Persian musician Hafez Nazeri, whom we caught on the phone last week when he was in Sacramento, is jazzed about his touring project, which has occupied him for the last three years, and which he brings to town [San Francisco] this Saturday. "My father, Shahram Nazeri, started singing Rumi's poetry 35 years ago," he says quietly yet firmly."

"Nazeri's upcoming concert ...is a very big deal. "In this project, there's a kind of fusion. It's not any more Persian, and not any more classical," but something which Nazeri, who's been singing since the ripe old age of three, and studying and performing on several Persian instruments since he was nine, calls "Modern Persian Classical Music." Like the great Lebanese composer, oud master and UNESCO Artist for Peace honoree Marcel Khalife, Nazeri's intent on pushing the boundaries of his culture's received tradition. At any rate, he will be combining sounds from Eastern and Western musical traditions, and he praises his musicians to the skies. Of his father, Nazeri says, "He developed a new style of singing for traditional Persian music, and he has a very unique style." "

"His father's nephew, Siavash Nazeri, whom Hafez calls "the greatest daf [Persian frame drum] in history," will be on that instrument; Salar Nader, whom he dubs "the greatest student of Zakir Hussein," on tabla; Liuh Wen Ting — "she's one of the best" — on viola; and James Wilson, "one of the top 10 cellists," on cello; and Hafez will be playing the Persian lute, the etar. So the musically adventurous will hear musicians from four different cultures — Indian, Persian, Taiwanese Chinese, and American — together on one stage."

"Nazeri is obviously intelligent, as well as totally committed to the path he's chosen — or maybe it chose him, as Shams chose Rumi, or Rumi chose Shams. Whatever the case, the coupling of Rumi's poems with Hafez's music and his father's singing will probably sound inevitable, even predestined. But how does Hafez feel about the country of his birth as AIPAC, the neocons, the EU, the UN, and the Bush Administration are poised to impose sanctions and probably far worse things to get its oil?"

" 'I think it's very unfortunate, very upsetting. If you forget about yourself, you fight with yourself and others. With our music, let's be in peace, and come back to who we really are. I think that whatever we are doing, we have to love each other and respect each other.' That's hardly a bad place to be as the tired, bloated, desperate West goes its warring way. Let's not forget that Sufi music is one of the finest flowers of Islam. And the Blue Mosque in Istanbul ain't bad, either. We need people like the Nazeris and their musical collaborators, and we certainly need Rumi. Now probably more than ever."