Hossein Alizadeh


Hossein Alizadeh is an Iranian musician, composer, radif-preserver, researcher, teacher, and tar and setar instrumentalist and improviser. He has performed with such musicians as Shahram Nazeri, Mohammadreza shajarian, Alireza Eftekhari and Jivan Gasparyan, as well as with a number of orchestras and ensembles.

Music career

Alizadeh was born in 1951 in Tehran. His father was from Urmia and his mother from Arak. As a teenager he attended secondary school at a music conservatory until 1975. His music studies continued at the University of Tehran, where his focus was composition and performance. He began postgraduate studies at the Tehran University of Art. After the Iranian Revolution, he resumed his studies at the University of Berlin, where he studied composition and musicology.
Alizadeh plays the tar and setar. He has performed with two of Iran's national orchestras, as well as with the Aref Ensemble, the Shayda Ensemble, and Masters of Persian Music. In Europe, his first professional performance was with the Bejart Ballet Company’s orchestra in a performance of a Maurice Béjart ballet called Golestan.

Awards

He has been nominated for the 2007 Grammy Award along with Armenian musician, Djivan Gasparyan, for their collaboration album, The Endless Vision.
In 2008, he was voted as "Iran's most distinguished musician of the year".
In November 28, 2014 he refused to accept France’s high distinction in art, Legion of Honour.

Inventions