From Isfahan to Irvine: Speech, Film Screening & Music Performance at Stanford University

Source: Iranian Studies Program at Stanford University

Hossein Omoumi

APRIL 18, 2017 - 6:30PM TO 8:30PM
Speaker: Hossein Omoumi
Venue: Cubberley Auditorium, Stanford (map)
Contact email: IRANIANSTUDIES@STANFORD.EDU
Event Series: Stanford Festival of Iranian Arts
Event Sponsor: Hamid and Christina Moghadam Program in Iranian Studies
Free and open to the public. No RSVP required. Event is in English.

Hossein Omoumi is a scholar and musician from Isfahan, Iran. He currently teaches at UC Irvine. A new documentary about his life, made by Hesam Abedimi, and innovative teaching style will also be screened (in Farsi with English subtitles). After, Hossein will discuss and demonstrate the structure of classical Persian music by singing and playing the Ney, with vocals from Jessika Kenney, santur accompaniment from Faraz Minooie, and Sina Dehghani playing the tombak.

About:

Hossein Omoumi was born in 1944, in Isfahan, Iran, and began his musical education singing with his father. At age 14, he started studying the ney, the traditional reed flute of Iran. While studying architecture, he was accepted as a tutorial student at the National Superior Conservatory of Music in Tehran, and worked with great masters Mahmud Karimi and Farhad Fakhreddini. He then worked with the great master of ney Hassan Kassaei.

Omoumi's performance career has included appearances at many of major festivals and concert halls in Europe and the United States, including San Francisco's World Music Festival, UCLA's Schoenberg Hall and Wadsworth Theater, the Getty Center in Los Angeles, the World Music Institute and Asia Society in New York, and Theatre de la Ville in Paris.

He is a noted scholar and teacher of Persian music, having served on the National Conservatory, Tehran University, Center for Conservation and Diffusion of Music (Iran National Television) in Tehran, Center for Oriental Music Studies (CEMO) of Sorbonne University in Paris, the Ethnomusicology departments of the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA), and the University of Washington (UW) in Seattle. He is now Maseeh Professor in Persian Performing Arts of music at the University of California, Irvine (UCI). He has arranged and composed 11 lessons to teach the principals of classical Persian music under the title of Pish Radif. His research on the making of the ney and Iranian percussions has opened new possibilities and introduced significant innovations to the ney, tombak and daf.

Omoumi graduated from the faculty of architecture at the National University of Iran with honors and taught there for 10 years after receiving his doctorate degree from the University of Florence, Italy, using a scholarship awarded by the Italian government.

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