Introducing Amir Amiri

Iranian-born santur (zither) player Amir Amiri has released a very impressive debut album at the age of 50. Amiri confesses to some previous self-released albums, which are no longer available, but stresses that Ajdad – Ancestors (Echoes of Persia) is his “calling card” on an instrument that he’s been playing since he was six and which he says represents his personality as a musician.

Opening track ‘Khurshid (The Sun)’ – one of two successive pieces on the album inspired by nature (the second track is entitled ‘Baaraan (Rain)’ – offers a calm melody layered with arpeggios creating a major harmony. In this way, Amiri brings both Eastern and Western elements into his music. Fittingly, there’s a delicacy about the santur that is very special in Persian music. It’s an instrument which is heard much less frequently than the kamancheh or plucked instruments like the tar and setar.

In Iran, Amiri had his left wrist broken as a warning not to play music. He says he has no idea why he was specifically targeted in this way, but it made him keen to get out. He emigrated to Canada in 1996, after having some lessons with Ravi Shankar in India. “There was a lot of trauma in my life,” he says. “You have to sort that out and then you can say something.”

Ajdad – Ancestors was recorded with an ensemble including the kamancheh-like ghaychak, oud, viola and percussion. Several of the pieces are tributes to ‘light-bearers’ as he calls them. One of them is Faramarz Payvar (1933-2009), a leading santur player who helped raise its profile as a classical instrument and devised a way of notating the music. Amiri sat in on several of his classes. Amiri’s composition ‘Chaharmezrab Abu Atta’, an elegant and sophisticated piece, opens with a phrase by Payvar, and it shifts from 4/4 to 7/4. Amiri is keen to highlight Payvar’s role in santur music, while also developing it.

Other ancestors who he acknowledges are santur player Ardavan Kamkar (of the famed Kamkars Ensemble) and Abolhasan Saba, a composer, violinist and setar player who Amiri celebrates with ‘Raghs Choobi (Dance of the Wooden Sticks)’, an animated folk-influenced dance from Khorasan. Another lively track is ‘Raghseh Sama (Sama Dance)’, which is inspired by Sufi music and, in particular, the five-beat Georgian dance which has a real 1-2-1-2-3 swing.

The conventional santur is a diatonic instrument with 72 strings (several for each note) which is hit with hammers – like the Indian santoor or Hungarian cimbalom. As the Hungarians developed a fully chromatic concert cimbalom, Amiri has commissioned a new instrument with tuning levers that enable it to be re-tuned quickly to allow for modulations (impossible on a traditional instrument). Ajdad – Ancestors includes two solo tracks for Reza Abaee on ghaychak and Abdul-Wahab Kayyali on oud, but it’s the santur that rightly stands out here and Amir Amiri’s ability in displaying it as a superb solo instrument.