17 Facts About Kayhan Kalhor

Kayhan Kalhor is an Iranian Kurdish kamancheh and setar player, and a vocal composer.

Kayhan Kalhor has received three Grammy Award for Best Traditional World Music Album nominations.

Kayhan Kalhor was born in Tehran to a Kurdish family.

Kayhan Kalhor began studying music at the age of seven.

At a musical conservatory in Tehran, Kayhan Kalhor worked under the directorship of Mohammad-Reza Lotfi who is from the northeast of Iran.

Kayhan Kalhor migrated to Italy by land, walking through Turkey, Romania, and Yugoslavia, picking up menial farm work along the way to support himself.

Four years after Kayhan Kalhor left Iran, his parents and brother were killed in an Iraqi missile attack during the Iran-Iraq War.

Kayhan Kalhor has a wide range of musical influences, uses several musical instruments, and crosses cultural borders with his work, but at his center he is an intense player of the kamancheh.

Kayhan Kalhor has composed works for and played alongside the famous Iranian vocalists Mohammad Reza Shajarian and Shahram Nazeri.

Kayhan Kalhor has composed and performed with the Indian sitar player Shujaat Husain Khan and Indian tabla player Swapan Chaudhuri in the group Ghazal.

Kayhan Kalhor's 2004 album In the mirror of the Sky was a joint venture with the Iranian lute player Ali Akbar Moradi.

Kayhan Kalhor's 2006 album The Wind is a collaboration with the Turkish baglama virtuoso Erdal Erzincan, with both Turkish and Persian pieces performed.

At other times Kayhan Kalhor has collaborated with Yo-Yo Ma's Silk Road Ensemble in the US and the Kronos Quartet.

In 1991, after having graduated from Carleton University and obtained Canadian citizenship, Kayhan Kalhor moved to the United States, settling in Brooklyn, New York City, and became commercially successful.

Kayhan Kalhor returned to Iran in 2002 due to increased anti-Muslim sentiment in the US following the September 11 attacks.

In 2010, Kayhan Kalhor composed "I was there", which was based "on a melody attributed to Ziryab, a ninth-century Iranian musician", for a Maya Beiser concert.

That same year, Kayhan Kalhor was informed that the US authorities were considering revoking his legal status as a US resident.