Kayhan Kalhor wins Artist of Year

The globalFEST Award Ceremony has honored Iranian maestro Kayhan Kalhor.

The great artist who has spent better part of his life in pushing Iranian music forward has been picked as the recipient of the Artist award of the 2020 American music event.

Kalhor has been constantly in spotlight recently as he won the WOMEX Artist Award In 2019. He was given the award for “ceaseless innovation and collaboration to create exciting new musical languages and for bringing the Persian classical music tradition to the ears of people all over the world”.

Early on when he was only seven, he started his artistic journey. He followed up on learning music with various musicians in Iran. Later, the passion for expanding his expertise, he moves to Rome and then to Canada where he studies western classical music and does a degree in this art.

He has composed works for Iran’s well-known vocalists including Shahram Nazeri.

 Besides Kalhor, Lisa Stafford gets the Trouble Worldwide Award and Tom Schnabel wins the Impact Award of the music event.

According to the official website for the globalFEST, the event “believes that music can be a driving force toward a society that values cultural diversity as a source of unity rather than division”.

The award ceremony was held on January 12, 2020.

AA/FM