Kayhan Kalhor

About Kayhan Kalhor

Kayhan Kalhor is a Kurdish kamancheh master from Kermanshah and the musician who did more than anyone to take the Iranian and Kurdish spike fiddle into concert halls around the world. He was born on 24 November into a Kurdish family; most sources give the year as 1963, while English Wikipedia gives 1964. Most sources name Kermanshah as his birthplace, though a few say Tehran. He began studying music at seven, and by thirteen he was playing with the National Orchestra of Radio and Television of Iran.

As a young man he played in the Shayda Ensemble under the tar master Mohammad Reza Lotfi, and he travelled through Kurdistan and Khorasan to learn their folk music. After leaving Iran he studied in Rome and then graduated in music from Carleton University in Ottawa. He co-founded the ensembles Dastan, Ghazal (with the sitar player Shujaat Husain Khan) and Masters of Persian Music, where he worked with the singer Mohammad Reza Shajarian.

Kalhor was an original member of Yo-Yo Ma's Silk Road Ensemble and shared in its Grammy for Best World Music Album for Sing Me Home in 2017. His duo albums The Wind and Kula Kulluk Yakışır Mı with the bağlama player Erdal Erzincan, Silent City with the string quartet Brooklyn Rider, and In the Mirror of the Sky with the Kurdish tanbur master Ali Akbar Moradi are landmarks of improvised music. He received the WOMEX Artist Award in 2019. His singing tone and his roots in Kurdish folk song have inspired a new generation of kamancheh players.

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