Sahba Motallebi and Naghmeh Farahmand

Performance Details

Date: Wednesday, October 11, 2017 at 7:30pm
Location: Ewell Recital Hall
Admission: Free

Sahba Motallebi is an acclaimed virtuosa of the tar, setar, and shoorangiz. She has studied music and
composition at distinguished institutions such as the National Conservatory (Iran), Saint Petersburg Korsakov Conservatory (Russia), RGS University (Turkey), and California Institute of Arts (USA).

Born in Iran and based in Southern California, Motallebi has performed in collaboration with renowned vocalists such as Mohammad Reza Shajarian, Alireza Ghorbani, and Sina Sarlak as well as with esteemed composers and musicians, notably Hossein Alizadeh, Arshad Tahmasebi, Keyhan Kalhour, and Yo-Yo Ma.

“There is no rock guitarist, no oud player, possibly no musician anywhere in the world with such subtle yet fearsome chops on a fretted instrument.” - New York Music Daily, October 2016.

Naghmeh Farahmand is a percussionist who plays the Persian frame drum, the daf. As a daughter of one of the leading percussion masters of Iran, Mahmoud Farahmand, Naghmeh grew up surrounded by music in a full house of drums.

While learning the rhythmic patterns of Persian traditional music under the supervision of her father, she was encouraged to learn a melodic instrument to gain insight into the melodic aspect of music as this would make her a better accompanist. Besides learning traditional music, Naghmeh found the daf to be very spiritual and began learning Sufi and Kurdish rhythms on the daf from Bijan Kamkar and Masoud Habibi.

In 2010 Naghmeh started exploring Arabian, Bulgarian, Turkish, and Indian music. She has taught master classes and workshops around the world.