Trio Chakam – Persian traditional music

Tuesday March 14th at 6:30pm
Rolex Learning Center Forum

Three young musicians with Iranian origins enlighten Persian traditional music with their talent. It is impossible to not succumb to their feminine complicity and coolness. Real virtuosos, they offer an intoxicating rhythm mixing lutes (tar and setar), ghanun (table zither) and tomb (percussion).

Their performances are built upon the subtle râdif codes, where intense rhythmical passages reply to melodious resonant tirades, where personal and modern improvisations join ancient Persian compositions. The listener sinks into the delicate depths of melancholic contemplation then gushes out transported by the percussions’ solar joy, whose beats liberate the cluttered heart. Amid this harmony opens a window that looks onto a singular musical universe, both intimate and magnificent.

The Trio Chakam was formed in 2014, celebrating a long friendship, and has presented its art in front moved audiences in France, Switzerland and the Netherlands. Ambassadors of one of the most beautiful thing in Iranian culture, the group performed in 2016 at Pully’s Octogone before the great artist Kayhan Kalhor.

Sogol Mirzaei enthralls admirers of the radif, the classical art music form of Iran, and music enthusiasts alike. Student of the tar and setar lutes under the great master Hushang Zarif, she completed her musical studies at Tehran’s National Conservatory, before pursuing her training in ethnomusicology at University of Sorbonne, Paris. In Iran, she played with many ensemble in the most prestigious venues (Vahdat opera, Niavaran palace, Fadjr festival…), while she now focuses on a remarkable soloist adventure from Paris.

Vahideh Eisaei grew up in an artistic family with love for arts, music and poetry. She completed musical training in Tehran, and achieved a Master of music at the University of Western Australia. For more than a decade, Vahideh has been playing Ghanun, rarely heard in Persian music, in different ensembles performing in Europe, Australia and the Middle East. Besides, she has been conducting researches project on children music among new and emerging communities in Perth, Australia. Her love of children’s music led her to work on the blossoming of their musical aptitudes since 2012.

Saghar Khadem began the subtle art of the tombak drum being only 8 years old, learning from her great grand-mother, before attending the classes of Tehran’s national conservatory and then Sweden’s Göteborg Music Academy. Later in 2006, she was acclaimed as one of the best musicians of her generation at Tehran’s great Fadjr Arts Festival for playing tombak, and the frame drums dayereh and daf. She gave a lot of performances across the world since, especially noted for her collaborations with celebrated musicians from very diverse musical universes.