Photo: Allard Willemse

“When Mr. Kalhor performed, it sounded like a conversation among several ­instruments, with the varying timbres at times evoking the wailing pleas of disconsolate lovers. From a simple, muted beginning, the music became more intense and embellished, as ornate melodies and ornaments unfolded with calligraphic detail above ostinato bass patterns.”
– The New York Times

Kayhan Kalhor is an internationally acclaimed virtuoso on the kamancheh (spiked fiddle) who, through his many musical collaborations, has been instrumental in popularizing Persian around the world and is a creative force in today’s music scene. His performances of traditional Persian music and multiple collaborations have attracted audiences around the globe. He has studied the music of Iran’s many regions, in particular those of Khorason and Kordestan, and has toured the world as a soloist with various ensembles and orchestras, including the New York Philharmonic and the Orchestre National de Lyon. He is co-founder of the renowned ensembles Dastan and Masters of Persian Music. Kalhor has composed works for Iran’s most renowned vocalists, Mohammad Reza Shajarian and Shahram Nazeri, and has also performed and recorded with Iran’s greatest instrumentalists.

He has composed music for television and film and was featured on the soundtrack of Francis Ford Copolla’s Youth Without Youth in a score that he collaborated on with Osvaldo Golijov. John Adams invited him to give a solo recital at Carnegie Hall as part of his Perspectives Series and he has appeared on a double bill at Lincoln Center’s Mostly Mozart Festival, sharing the program with the Festival Orchestra performing the Mozart Requiem. Kayhan is an original member of Yo-Yo Ma’s Silk Road Project, for whom he continues to compose for and tour with. His compositions appear on all of the Ensemble’s albums. His most recent albums include Silent City, a collaboration with Brooklyn Rider and I Will Not Stand Alone with santoor player Ali Bahrami Fard. Kayhan has been nominated for three Grammys and in 2017 was awarded a Grammy with Yo-Yo Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble (2017).

Kayhan Kalhor, born in Tehran, began his musical studies at the age of seven under Master Ahmad Mohajer. A child prodigy on the kamancheh, he was invited at the age of thirteen to work in the Iranian National Radio and Television Orchestra, where he performed for five years. At seventeen, Kalhor began working with the Shayda Ensemble of the Chavosh Cultural Center, the most prestigious arts organization at the time in Iran. While performing with Shayda, he continued studying the Iranian classical repertoire (radif) with different masters. In 1978, Kalhor went to Rome to study Western classical music and continued his studies at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada, where he received a degree in music. He has composed works for Iran’s most renowned vocalists, including Mohammad Reza Shajarian and Shahram Nazeri and has performed and recorded with many of Iran’s greatest artists. In 1991, he co-founded Dastan, the renowned Persian classical music ensemble, and in 1997, he formed Ghazal ensemble with Shujaat Husain Khan. His commissions include works written for the Kronos Quartet and for Yo-Yo Ma’s Silk Road Project, with whom he continues to compose for as well as tour. In 2002, he was nominated for a BBC Radio 3 World Music Award; In 2005, he was awarded the Preis der deutschen Schallplattenkritik (“German Record Critics’ Award”); five of his recordings have been nominated for Grammys, and in 2017, he was awarded a Grammy.

Erdal Erzincan is one of Turkey’s most respected folk musicians and a leading master of the bağlama, the long-necked lute at the heart of Anatolian music. Known for his virtuosic playing and deep musical expression, he has spent decades shaping the sound of contemporary Turkish folk while preserving its traditional roots.

Born in Erzurum in 1971, Erzincan began exploring regional folk traditions at an early age. After moving to Istanbul in 1981, he studied at the Arif Sağ Music School and later at Istanbul Technical University’s Turkish State Conservatory. There he conducted research on the şelpe technique, a fingerstyle method of playing the bağlama without a plectrum, and presented a thesis on its notation and performance practice.

In 1990, he founded his own music school, dedicated to bağlama education and the training of new generations of musicians. Since then, he has released many albums featuring both instrumental and vocal works and has performed widely in Turkey and abroad. In 2004, he established the Erdal Erzincan Bağlama Orchestra, composed of his students, and gave numerous concerts including a performance at Vienna’s Konzerthaus with the Ambassade Symphony Orchestra under Russell McGregor, supported by Austrian President Heinz Fischer.

That same year, Erzincan began his collaboration with Iranian kamancheh virtuoso Kayhan Kalhor. Their acclaimed album The Wind blends Persian and Anatolian musical traditions into a powerful and meditative instrumental dialogue.

In addition to his performing career, Erzincan is a devoted educator and author. He co-wrote the two-volume Bağlama Method with Arif Sağ in 2009 and later published Compositions for Bağlama in 2019, featuring his original works. His “Mobile Bağlama” project brings music education and instruments to children in remote regions of eastern Anatolia, reflecting his lifelong commitment to accessibility and cultural preservation.

For more than thirty years, Erdal Erzincan has combined mastery, scholarship, and teaching to sustain and expand the living tradition of Turkish folk music.