2011/12 Music Series

Ostad Hossein Omoumi
Saturday, June 30, 2012, 8:00 pm


$20 general, $15 seniors, $10 students and alumni (with ID)

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Event Summary

A concert of classical Persian music and poetry performed by the remarkable Ostad Hossein Omoumi, master of the Persian ney, along with vocalist Jessika Kenney, scholar Fatemeh Keshavarz and students of this summer’s Classical Persian Music workshop.

Ostad Hossein Omoumi was born in 1944, in Isfahân, Iran, and began his musical education singing with his father, and at age 14, started studying the ney, the traditional reed flute of Iran. While studying architecture, he was accepted as a student at the National Superior Conservatory of Music in Tehran, where he studied with Mahmud Karimi, Farhâd Fakhreddini, and Hassan Kassâei. Dr. Omoumi’s performing career has included appearances major festivals and concert halls in Europe and the United States, including 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. Dr. Omoumi 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), Tehran, and the Center for Oriental Music Studies (CEMO) of the Sorbonne University in Paris. He is now the Maseeh Professor in Persian Performing Arts at the University of California at Irvine. 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.

Jessika Kenney is a vocalist, composer, and faculty member at Cornish College of the Arts. She has performed and recorded internationally for the last 15 years, and studied many areas of vocal music, particularly classical Persian vocal music and Central Javanese vocal music. Jessika has worked with many amazing musicians in traditional and experimental contexts. Her recorded works include Aestuarium composed and performed with her husband Eyvind Kang, Stonehouse Songs with Jarrad Powell, and Voices of Spring with the Hossein Omoumi Ensemble. Her original music includes settings of the poetry of Attar in Atria and Her Sword. She has studied radif and classical poetry with Ostad Omoumi since 2004 and is a student of the Persian language.

Dr. Fatemeh Keshavarz is an Iranian academic, writer and literary figure. She is a professor of Persian Language and Comparative Literature and chair of the department of Asian and Near Eastern Languages and Literatures at Washington University in St. Louis. Fatemeh Keshavarz holds a B.A. (1976) in Persian Language and Literature from Shiraz University, and an M.A. (1981) and a Ph.D. (1985) in Near Eastern Studies from School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. Professor Keshavarz has taught at Washington University since 1990, where she currently chairs the Department of Asian Near Eastern Languages and Literatures. She has served as Director of the Graduate Program in Jewish, Islamic, and Near Eastern Studies, Director of the Center for the Study of Islamic Societies and Civilizations, and President of the Association of Women Faculty. Her recent books include Reading Mystical Lyric: The Case of Jalal al-Din Rumi, and Jasmine and Stars: reading more than Lolita in Tehran. Her hour-long episode of NPR’s Speaking of Faith hosted by Krista Tippett on “The Ecstatic Faith of Rumi” received the Peabody Award in 2008.

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