An internationally renowned percussionist, Pejman Hadadi is a proficient player of tombak and daf, the two drums of Iranian classical and folk musics. For the past thirty years, he has been teaching traditional styles of tombak playing and the theory of Persian rhythmic cycles to students in the US, Europe, and Iran. He received the prestigious Durfee Foundation Master Musician Award twice for dissemination and propagation of Persian music in the US. Since 1999, Pejman has composed a large body of music for dance, which he has performed extensively in international festivals with renowned Iranian master musicians, dancers and choreographers.

https://www.pejmanhadadi.com

Soheil Nadimi started his journey as a musician at the age of 3. He began by learning the tombak, a traditional Persian percussion, and later in his teens expanded his musical knowledge by learning melodic Persian fiddle instrument, the kamanche. At the age of 17, he immigrated to the United States and focused solely on the percussive elements of Persian music. Since then, he has performed in numerous concerts and held many workshops, teaching the percussive elements of Persian musics to a diverse audience of Iranians and non-Iranians. He has also been teaching the tombak since he moved to California.

He is currently working on incorporating Electronic Dance Music with Persian musical elements in live performances. This new experience is to achieve a congruous and yet innovative fusion set and a way of connecting music to other performative arts.

Behzad Nadimi is an accomplished santūr performer and teacher of Iranian music. He was instrumental in collecting and publishing the radīf of Mirza-Abdollah for santūr (2016). He has performed throughout Iran and in California. He is a direct disciple of santūr master Pashang Kamkar; he began his studies of the santūr and the radīf (Iranian musical repertoire) when he was in high school. Nadimi has recorded a number of CDs on the santūr and directed various music ensembles.

Composer, Conductor, Instrumentalist, and Educator Shahab Paranj, an Iranian-born composer, holds degrees in music composition from the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, Manhattan School of Music, and the University of California, Los Angeles. He is considered one of the pioneers among his generation of Iranian composers whose composition style integrates Persian and Western composition techniques.

Known as a tombak virtuoso, he has performed, recorded, and collaborated with some of the most celebrated artists worldwide. Acclaimed by the San Francisco Examiner as “impressive” and by composer John Adams as “unique,” Paranj blends Persian rhythmic and melodic influences with Western texture and form in his composition.

Recent commissions include works for ensembles such as the Russian String Orchestra, Intersection Contemporary Music Ensemble, Long Beach Opera, Jâca Duo, Aleron Trio, San Francisco New Music Ensemble, One Great City Duo, MSM Symphony Orchestra, and international Low Brass Trio. Additionally, he has composed an original score for the movie “Dressage,” which won the 2018 feature film (generation category) at the Berlin Film Festival. He has received formal recognition from the Mehr Humanitarian Society (2010) and the City and County of San Francisco (2011). Paranj is a founder and artistic director of “du vert à l’infini” a contemporary music festival in the Franche-Comte region of France. He currently serves as a faculty member at the UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music.