‘CRAZY TEENAGER’ TO CRAZY TALENT
Composer pushes back against Iranian stereotypes
With Hafez Nazeri’s move from Iran to the U.S. roughly two decades ago came a string of formidable musical achievements.
The composer, multi-instrumentalist and vocalist, now 39, initially went to New York simply to study music. But his determination to create a musical fusion between Iranian and Western music led to concerts at the Kodak Theatre in Los Angeles and Carnegie Hall in New York that helped put his art on the map.
In 2014, he released an album called Rumi Symphony Project: Untold, an epic multicultural effort involving more than 40 musicians and thousands of hours of studio time. Inspired by the enduring art of the 13th-century Sufi poet and philosopher Rumi and released on the esteemed Sony Classical label, the album even topped Billboard’s classical music charts for a time.
Nazeri said that through all of his performances and music, he has “wanted to show the world another dimension of Iranian culture and history rather than all those negative things you are hearing in the press.”
And yet, when he returned to Iran after 16 years away, he met with a backlash, controversies and frustrations.
“All the great composers were so against what I did with Untold,” Hafez said. “There were bad articles — ‘con man’ and ‘showman,’ ‘this is all fake music’ — which was very sad. I had worked so hard, with no support of anyone, to bring my dreams into reality.”
Some concerts were cancelled after foreign musicians were denied visas. Other concerts were called off hours before they were to have begun because women singers were involved in the performance — in direct contravention of an Iranian prohibition.
“One of the brave attempts of mine was to bring women with us,” Nazeri said. “I wanted to give a message: how much we value women (and) they cannot suppress women’s voices.
“We have a lot of limitations. It’s very difficult to work in Iran, very difficult.”
It’s a tribute to his persistence that he has remained in Tehran, where he was born and raised, and established a musical career in his homeland. Nazeri is, however, spending the rest of October in Canada, where he will play five concerts in major cities, including a Saturday concert in Ottawa at the Algonquin Commons Theatre.
Had Nazeri never left Iran, he would naturally have been on track
for stardom as a more traditional musician. His father Shahram — who will be on tour in Canada with his son — is a singer of classical Persian and Sufi music who has even been dubbed “Iran’s Pavarotti.” As a child, Hafez played a range of instruments, from the daf, a Middle Eastern frame drum, to the setar, an Iranian lute. By the time he was nine, Hafez was sharing European stages with his father.
However, Shahram did not want his son to be confined by musical tradition. “He wanted me to have my own voice and create things that are me,” Nazeri said.
The open-mindedness of the household extended to allowing Nazeri to listen to Western rock. “As I was growing up, I was a crazy teenager,” he said. “I was listening to Metallica, Pink Floyd, things that were so odd for children of other (musical) masters in Iran. But my father never prohibited me from that. He wanted me to listen and perhaps learn from that and to expand my ideas and my mind.”
As a teenager, Nazeri grew more keen not only to compose, but also to innovate. “Crazy things were coming out of me, as if just a new door was opened,” he said.
Despite his blossoming career in Iran, Nazeri felt he had to move to New York to study music. He wanted to bring harmony, counterpoint and orchestration to the classical Iranian musical tradition that was more improvisational and monophonic.
“It was a big drama in Iran. ‘ Why did he leave when he was becoming so famous in Iran and loved by people?’” Nazeri said. “That wasn’t enough for me. That wasn’t my goal. My goal wasn’t to become famous or rich … I wanted to go and find that big thing that was missing in my heart and my soul.”
It took him years to realize his ambitions in the West. But following his return to Iran about four years ago, his music encountered new barriers and criticisms.
After two concerts were thwarted due to a lack of visas for foreign musicians, Nazeri considered leaving Iran. But a friend persuaded him to hire Iran’s best musicians instead. Nazeri followed his advice and was able to give concerts.
“I stayed there,” Nazeri said. “It made me sad, but never made me change my mind. I was so strong and I thought to myself, ‘You cannot hide the truth. If something is good or if there is something significant, you cannot hide it.’”
Nazeri’s Canadian concerts this month are to feature music he hopes to record next spring at Abbey Road Studios in London. The prospect of entering the famed studio has him so excited that he’s losing sleep and counting the days, he said.
At the Canadian concerts, which coincide with religious holidays in Iran when he would not have been allowed to perform, Nazeri will be staging his music with a multinational ensemble.
“We are people from different parts of the world with different religions and languages and musical backgrounds, but we all sing the same tune for peace and unity, for bringing people together rather than separating them,” Nazeri said.