Jazz Articles about Hafez Modirzadeh
About Hafez Modirzadeh
Instrument: Saxophone, tenor
Article Coverage | Calendar | Albums | Photos | Similar ArtistsHafez Modirzadeh: Facets
by Hrayr Attarian
Innovative composer and saxophonist Hafez Modirzadeh has always pushed the idiomatic envelope in his work. His eighth release as a leader, the stimulating Facets is, as hinted on the cover art, a musical kaleidoscope. Consisting of 18 short tracks the album explores various time signatures, modes and tonal colors that fuse many musical traditions. Three equally idiosyncratic artists take turns for a set of solos and duets with Modirzadeh. “Facet Sorey," for instance, is a crystalline tune with ...
read moreHafez Modirzadeh with Kris Davis, Tyshawn Sorey and Craig Taborn: Facets
by Troy Dostert
A rigorous, sometimes imposingly cerebral innovator, tenor saxophonist Hafez Modirzadeh has dedicated himself since the 1980s to ever more ambitious ways of opening up the Western musical tradition to scrutiny. A particular obsession is the restrictive quality of conventional instrumental tunings, which, as Modirzadeh perceives them, can limit the possibilities available to improvisers and composers alike, especially when contrasted with the less confining musical traditions of the Middle East. One of his pathbreaking efforts in this regard was his Radif ...
read moreHafez Modirzadeh: In Convergence Liberation
by Dan Bilawsky
Is music truly a universal language? That's a question that's a bit complicated to answer. While music has the potential to be a universal language, and it remains a common platform of communication for so many, it hasn't really fulfilled that potential thus far. Regional accents and dialects still abound, isolating and separating listeners and performers into different cliques and communities. Every fully functioning human ear can certainly take everything in, regardless of what tunings, scales, and rhythmic structures are ...
read moreHafez Modirzadeh: In Convergence Liberation
by Karl Ackermann
Multi-reed player and composer Hafez Modirzadeh has created a sweeping global experience with In Convergence Liberation; a further examination of the cross-cultural influences explored on Post-Chromodal Out (PI Recordings, 2012). The earlier recording incorporated elements of multi-regional modalism and chromatics, and these compositional techniques are made even more textural with a significantly deeper line up of players. Modirzadeh--playing five reed instruments plus percussion--string quartet ETHEL, two vocalists and the returning trumpeter Amir ElSaffar join masters of Persian string and percussion ...
read moreHafez Modirzadeh: In Convergence Liberation
by Hrayr Attarian
Multi-instrumentalist, composer and ethnomusicologist Hafez Modirzadeh's In Convergence Liberation on the intrepid Pi Recordings label is an ambitious work, and one at which he admirably succeeds. The album is a single, unified entity made up of five distinct but interlaced suites that explore a primal spirituality and express it in timeless poetry. Deftly merging Iberian song, eastern (primarily Persian) and western classical heritages and a hefty dose of improvisation Modirzadeh creates a contemplative transcultural musical epic. As he ...
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