Improvisation isn't strictly the purview of jazz, although it's certainly one of the genre's defining foundations. But it's also an area of fertile exploration for artists operating far outside its ...

Kayhan Kalhor is an Iranian kamancheh virtuoso and composer whose work has been celebrated around the globe. When Kayhan Kalhor first left Iran, at age 17, he walked — more than 2,500 miles, to Italy.

Kurdish militias in northern Syria have been a crucial U.S. ally in the fight against ISIS. But Turkey launched an attack on the U.S.-backed Kurdish forces after U.S. troops withdrew this week. “These ...

The Artist Award is one of the three main awards of the festival, which is presented to those artists who have made a lasting impression in the U.S., their homeland or around the world. The Trouble ...

For Persians, the New Year comes not in the dead of winter, but right at the vernal equinox. As spring renews the earth, people celebrate this fresh beginning as Nowruz, a joyous 12-day festival to ...

Kayhan Kalhor has spent much of his adult life introducing Western audiences to the seductive subtleties of Iranian music. An unsurpassed master of the kamancheh, the ancient four-string Persian ...

Just as in every realm of traditional Iranian art, from minutely scaled miniatures to intricate poetry to endlessly ornamented carpet weaving, the goal in Persian classical music is for both artist ...

In an exquisite moment on Kayhan Kalhor's last recorded collaboration, The Rain (ECM, 2003), tabla player Sandeep Das hits an "out" note on his tuned drum. This momentarily shocks Kalhor and sitarist ...

Kayhan Kalhor is an Iranian kamancheh virtuoso and composer whose work has been celebrated around the globe. When Kayhan Kalhor first left Iran, at age 17, he walked — more than 2,500 miles, to Italy.

Kayhan Kalhor is an Iranian kamancheh virtuoso and composer whose work has been celebrated around the globe. When Kayhan Kalhor first left Iran, at age 17, he walked — more than 2,500 miles, to Italy.