More about the music in The Shahnameh

Arash Moradi was born in the North West region of Kurdish Iran, a musically rich area, to a musical family – his father Ali Akbar Moradi is Iran’s leading tanbur player.  For centuries, the music of the tanbur has been considered sacred within this community, with songs and chants preserved and passed on through transmission from master to apprentice across generations.

In creating the music for this performance, Arash works with the modes of Persian classical, Kurdish maqam and Sufi music, the qualities of the story and the style of each instrument, as well as themes known to be associated with characters. While setar and tanbur are traditional instruments with long histories, the shurangiz is a relatively new instrument more suitable to Persian classical music.  In a drive to protect music kept alive in the Kurdish Yarsan community for thousands of years, Arash’s father, Ali Akbar Moradi spent decades collecting, learning and recording  72 original and sacred maqams so that contemporary  musicians could improvise and create new compositions rooted in traditional culture.  Arash makes great use of this legacy, using instruments with a variety of phrases and colours that enable him to capture the different textures and qualities of each story.