Dariush Talai, an Iranian tar and setar player, musicologist, composer, and educator will perform a free concert at BGSU Friday, Feb. 28 at 7 p.m. in Bryan Recital Hall.
Talai has become internationally recognized for his contributions to the world of Persian art music. Born in 1953, he began his studies of traditional Persian music with masters of radif, the canonical corpus of melodic models that constitute the core of the Persian classical dastgah repertory, and are transmitted intergenerationally from master musicians to their students.
He has recorded numerous albums, many of which have been released through the Mahoor Institute of Culture and Art.
Though his personal style is classical at its core, Talai is the only musician known to be able to play and improvise on the tar in styles that range from those of the oldest recordings of traditional Persian music to those of the most contemporary performances. He has also experimented with new genres and applications of music through his international musical collaborations.
Talai has become an internationally acclaimed author; he invented his own system of notation for music of the radif tradition, and has published numerous texts that discuss his original analysis of the aesthetics of Persian classical music. As an educator, Talai has taught at the University of Tehran, the Sorbonne, and University of Washington in Seattle.
(Information from the Aga Khan Development Network)
