CANCELLED: Alireza Ghorbani

Some singers have a voice like a remedy. It penetrates straight to the listener’s hearts, making a detour around all the filters of the intellect, and makes them feel better immediately. Alireza Ghorbani has one of these voices. In some songs, the melodies seem to simply flow out of him. In Iranian music, the singing lives from a multitude of the finest technical nuances, and Ghorbani has mastered these to perfection. When the vocal part intensifies into passion and power, he can call on undreamt-of reserves of force and expression. The utmost skill, in other words, disguised as pure nature. The master singer from Teheran is bringing the programme »Lost in Love – Love songs from the rose garden of Persian poets« to the Sufi Festival. If you find this title too flowery, too perfumed, rest assured that only aromas of the utmost purity are distilled here.

Alireza Ghorbani is accompanied by four musicians who show his remarkable vocal art off to best advantage, playing the knee-held violin kamancheh, the long-necked lute tar, the dulcimer santur and the frame drum daf. And the texts, written by such poets as Rumi and Hafiz, are purest Sufi literature: the ancient verses point the way to the utmost love, which finds fulfilment in becoming on with the (divine) beloved.