The winners of the XII PortoCartoon will receive trophies and prizes during the opening ceremony of the exhibition to be held at the premises of the National Museum of the Press in June.

2º PRÉMIO PORTOCARTOON | 2ND PRIZE PORTOCARTOON
Mahmood Azadina
Irão | Iran
“Air Bus”

The awarded works will also become the property of the Portuguese Printing Press Museum and will be part of the International Cartoon Gallery.

20 foreign and Iranian plays by renowned artists will go on stage during the festival, among which Italy and the Netherlands are the most active participants.

“Grand Inquisitor” by Peter Brook was among the participants whose staging was cancelled due to “extremely divergent reactions” produced by his invitation, as the Public Relations of the festival announced in a press release.

International Association of Theatre Critics (IATC) President Yun-Cheol Kim (South Korea), IATC Honorary President Ian Herbert (Britain) and IATC Honorary Secretary General Maria Helena Serôdio (Portugal) will judge the International Section alongside with the renowned Iranian stage artists Davud Rashidi and Davud Mirbaqeri.

The foreign jurors will be holding several workshops during the gala in Tehran.

Hilda Hellwig will hold a workshop on stage directorship. World modern theater will be presented by Levan Khetaguri and Brian Daly from Canada will hold a “Character Mask” workshop.

British theater scholar Simon Edwards will hold a “Clown Master Class” during which he will teach techniques for playing the part of a clown, MNA reported.

Constanze Fischbeck and Daniel Kötter will hold a 5-day workshop entitled “The Art of Tehran Video… Documentation of Theater-Performance of Urban Space” during the festival and Roger McCann will hold one-day educational workshop on “Theatrical Marketing”.

A collection of posters concerning festivals and seminars on theater as well as performances will also be showcased on the sideline of festival.

The posters created over the past two years will be put on display at the Iranian Artists Forum from January 22 until 31.

Funded in part by the D.C. Commission on the Arts & Humanities, an agency supported in part by National Endowment for the Arts

Alizadeh is considered an inspiration to an entire generation of Iran’s musical culture. Trained in composition, performance and
musicology at the Universities of Tehran and Berlin, he also studied with the ostads (maestros) of Persian music including Ali Akbar Khan Shahnazi, Nur Ali Borumand, Abdollah Davami, Mahmood Karimi and Houshang Zarif.

Alizadeh has been both conductor and soloist with the Iranian National Radio and Television Orchestra. He founded the Aref Ensemble and performed with the Shayda Ensemble, both dedicated to the promotion and advancement of Iranian classical music. Alizadeh has recorded the entire body of the radif (a core set of works made up of about 200 short modal pieces called gushehs) based on the interpretation of Mirza Abdollah (1843-1918), a noted court musician and master of both the Persian setar (a four-stringed plucked lute) and the tar.

Alizadeh has himself composed many works of contemporary and neo-classical Iranian music including “Hessar,” “Ney Nava” and “Song of Compassion” and film scores including Gabbeh, A Time for Drunken Horses and, most recently, Turtles Can Fly. Alizadeh has performed extensively throughout the United States, Europe and Asia and has appeared on many radio and television programs around the world. He has taught at the University of Tehran, the Tehran Music Conservatory and the California Institute of the Arts.

Kayhan Kalhor is an internationally acclaimed kamancheh (spike-fiddle) virtuoso and has played a leading role in popularizing Persian music in the West. A member of Yo-Yo Ma’s Silk Road Project, his compositions appear on all three of the ensemble’s albums and three of his recent recordings have been nominated for Grammys. Said the New York Times last season, “When Mr. Kalhor performed, it sounded like a conversation among several instruments, with the varying timbres at times evoking the wailing pleas of disconsolate lovers. From a simple, muted beginning, the music became more intense and embellished, as ornate melodies and ornaments unfolded with calligraphic detail above ostinato bass patterns.”

Kalhor began his musical studies at the age seven and at 13 was invited to work with the National Orchestra of Radio and Television of Iran, where he performed for five years. At 17 he began working with the Shayda Ensemble of the Chavosh Cultural Center, the most prestigious arts organization in Iran at the time.

Kalhor has traveled extensively throughout Iran, studying the music of its many regions, especially of Khorason and Kordestan. He has soloed with a number of leading ensembles, including the New York Philharmonic and the Orchestre National de Lyon, and is co-founder of the renowned ensembles Dastan, Ghazal: Persian & Indian Improvisations and Masters of Persian Music.

Kalhor has composed works for Iran’s most renowned vocalists Mohammad Reza Shajarian and Shahram Nazeri and has performed and recorded with Iran’s greatest instrumentalists. Kayhan has also composed music for television and film and was most recently featured on the soundtrack of Francis Ford Coppola’s Youth Without Youth in a score on which he collaborated with Osvaldo Golijov. Last season, composer John Adams invited Kalhor to perform a solo recital at Carnegie Hall as part of his Perspectives Series and in the same year Kalhor appeared on a double bill at Lincoln Center’s Mostly Mozart Festival.

The Masters of Persian Music ensemble also includes vocalist Hamid Reza Nourbakhsh, a leading disciple of Mohammad Reza Shajarian. Accompanists are M.R. Ebrahimi (barbat or oud, plucked lute) Alireza Hosseini (tombak, single-headed goblet-shaped drum), Rouzbeh Rahimi, (santur, a hammered dulcimer) and Siamak Jahangiry (ney, flute).

Tickets:
Washington Performing Arts Society
The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts

The exhibition started on the ground floor with personal photographs of Sohrab Sepehri. Then in the main gallery we saw his big well known tree trunk paintings and as we moved down through the lower galleries we saw his other works and some personal effects such as his famous hat and brushes as well as his simple bed which were on display.

His simple and profound poetry soothes my soul and his paintings get through to my heart. To me he is a legend and has yet to find his importance among ordinary Iranians as a great artist.
Sohrab Sepehri was born in Kashan and was one of Iran’s leading modernist painters and poets until his death in 1980.

The exhibition will continue until 21st January 2010.

Sohrab Sepehri biography

By Syma Sayyah, Tehran

All entries will be judged for creativity, quality, and originality.

To learn about Farhang Foundation please visit: www.farhang.org

Submission Opening November 1, 2009

Submission Deadline February 1, 2010

Winner Announcement March 1, 2010

Award Presentation March 14, 2010

Winner’s Prizes
First Prize: $10,000 USD
Second Prize: $5,000 USD
Third Prize: $3,000 USD

For festival guidelines, terms and conditions please visit: www.sociarts.com/farhangfilmfest

The 9th Tehran International Cartoon Biennial opened Sunday with a ceremony at the Saba Art and Cultural Institute. The biennial is being held concurrently at the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Arts and the Ahvaz Museum of Contemporary Art from November 22 to December 16.

List of Participants

The ceremony was attended by officials as well as artists including Bahman Abdi, Mohammad-Hossein Nirumand and Kiumars Derambakhsh.

People visit the 9th Tehran International Cartoon Biennial, which opened at the Saba Art and Cultural Institute in Tehran on November 22, 2009.

A total of 4,238 artworks were submitted to the gala’s secretariat out of which 839 works are going on display at the exhibition.

The contest is in five categories. The Cartoon section has a sub-section on the theme of fear and also one that is free theme. The Comic Strip section is free theme and the Caricature section has a sub-section on the theme of political portraits and also one that is free theme.

Turkey, China and Brazil respectively are the most active participants in the event.

Source: Mehr News Agency, Tehran (photos by Raouf Mohseni)

“We’re hearing all about nuclear weapons and all these crazy things,” said Nazeri. “Look at us, people who come together from different cultures, different musical backgrounds and we all create love together, for you, for the world.”

Nazeri’s father, Shahram Nazeri, a famed classical singer known as Iran’s Pavarotti, is scheduled to perform “Cycle One: Iranian Sounds of Peace” alongside his son and classical musicians from the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center.



In the piece, violin strains are punctuated with the rumble of the daf, a hand drum ringed with metal pieces that tremble when it is struck. At times, the string instruments of East and West are plucked in sync in a style that could be considered controversial.

Cultural authorities in the Islamic Republic of Iran have worked to prevent foreign influence for decades, in backlash to the previous regime of the Shah, often criticized for being pro-Western.

Though easily purchased on the black market, Western-style pop music is banned under Islamic rule, frowned on by austere mullahs for its sensual female solo singers and frivolity.

But blending cultures in music is now natural to Hafez Nazeri, 30, who moved to the U.S. 10 years ago and where he’s studied Western music, collaborated with American artists and fallen in love with New York City.

Even the instrument Hafez Nazeri performs on is a traditional Persian instrument he’s improvised by adding two strings to increase the Persian setar’s range.

Hafez and his father are among the few artists allowed to travel freely and perform and record music inside Iran. His political views are strictly pragmatic and pacifistic — what concerns him isn’t so much who governs Iran, but that all Iranians can live safely in their country.

Shahram Nazeri’s music has escaped harsh censorship, in part because he sings the poetry of Iran’s great poets to traditional music. His album “Gol-e-Sad Barg” sold 40 million copies and even in the most far-flung villages of Iran, small children can sing his renditions of Rumi’s poetry.



At the premiere performance of the new fusion symphony in Los Angeles, the performance earned standing ovations from an audience of mostly Iranian expatriates.

One audience member, an elderly gentleman who stormed out during the third act, groused loudly during an intermission that the music “may be opera, or it may be disco, but it is not Iranian!”

But it brought others to tears. Thundering applause continued at the end of the performance until Shahram Nazeri came out to sing a few of his best-known tunes for encores.

The father briefly obliged those who repeatedly called out for him to sing “Iran-e-Kohan” or “Original Iran,” a song that regained popularity as a soundtrack for YouTube videos of violent street demonstrations following Iran’s June 12 elections.

The song first became popular during Iran’s eight year war with Iraq in the 1980s, with lyrics that sing “The world watches for the freedom of Iranians/Be aware, the original Iranians are in danger.”

The audience grew still after Shahram Nazeri sang the first few lines of the mournful song. Appearing to sense the darkening of the auditorium’s mood, he quickly broke from the tune, and finished on two upbeat favorites as the audience sang along and then roared with approval.

by The Associated Press

“The museum consists of several sections and we aim to elevate it to a world-class museum. Its different sections are now home to a variety of musical instruments such as wind instruments, string instruments, regional instruments and national instruments, a library, an instrument-making workshop, and a gallery.



“A collection of personal instruments possessed by masters Ebrahim Qanbari-Mehr, Shajarian, and Kayhan Kalhor are now on display as gifts and we hope officials will help us purchase these items soon.”
He added that this is only the beginning and the expectation is for musicians to help the museum achieve a better position in the future. “Although we enjoy the support of the Tehran Municipality, we are an independent identity and we need to increase our own efforts.”



Musician and expert on Iran’s regional music Mohammadreza Darvishi was next to speak briefly. After first paying tribute to the late santur virtuoso Parviz Meshkatian, he said, “What we see today at the museum are the different sections of the instruments, but we need to work on other sections as well.
“The museum is now home to a mere 30 percent of the Iranian instruments and we must try to transform it into a treasury of instruments. One might ask why this much attention should be paid to musical instruments, but we should realize that instruments can lead us to our cultural roots and help us to study the path of development of our country.”

Masters Shajarian and Fakhreddini also made short speeches. The ceremony ended with a musical performance by a troupe from Sistan-Baluchestan.

IRAN ENLIGHTENMENT WEEK

• November 6 – Asia Society – “Border,” film by Kambozia Partovi, 7 PM
• November 7 – Leila Taghinia-Milani Heller Gallery, New York, 6 to 8 PM
• November 8 – Open Center – Lecture, An Evening of Persian Mystical Poetry and Wisdom, 6 to 8 PM
• November 10- New York University- Meet the Artist, Rosenthal Pavilion, 7 to 10 Pm
• November 11 – Asia Society – Lecture & Instrument Demonstration, 7 PM
• November 14 – Carnegie Performance and VIP Cocktail Party

Hafez & Shahram Nazeri

Program Details
Shahram Nazeri, Voice
Hafez Nazeri, Artistic Director and Setar
Artists from the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center:
Paul Neubauer, Viola
Ida Kavafian, Viola
Fred Sherry, Cello
Special Guests:
Matt Haimovitz, Cello
Tim Cobb, Double Bass
Hussein Zahawy, Percussion

The Rumi Symphony Project, featuring the music of Hafez Nazeri, integrates classical Iranian and Western musical traditions.

Mania Akbari
Parastoo Forouhar
Shahab Fotouhi
Rodin Hamidi
Behnam Kamrani
Simin Keramati
Avish Khebrezadeh
Khosro Khosravi
Farideh Lashai
Mandana Moghadam
Malekeh Nayiny
Neda Razavipour
Hamid Sahihi
Rozita Sharafjahan

The exhibition will be launched with a champagne breakfast, as part of the Frieze VIP programme, at the RCA 10am – 12pm on Thursday 15th October 2009. The exhibition will come to an end on Saturday 17th October 2009 from 6pm – 9pm with a private cocktail reception at the RCA.

Dr. Alireza Sami Azar
Art historian and architect Alireza Sami Azar was director of the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Arts from 1999 to 2005, and teaches at the Mahe-Mehr Institute for Culture and Art. British-educated, he holds a PhD in architecture and was Professor of the faculty of Fine Arts at Tehran University. During his time at the Museum of Contemporary Arts, Sami Azar curated numerous exhibitions and was responsible for the promotion of many Iranian artists onto the international art scene.

The artists’ works will be on sale with 50% of the proceeds being donated to Magic of Persia’s art and education initiatives.

Magic of Persia (MOP), a non-profit, non-political charity registered in the UK and the USA, educates young people on the value and unique contribution of Persian culture to society. MOP achieves its mission through the development and promotion of education and communication programmes, in partnership with world-class institutions.
For information, please visit the MOP CAP website.