Mohammad-Reza Lotfi

From HitStory, the pop encyclopedia of School of Rock · Artist

Mohammad-Reza Lotfi (1947 to 2014) was an Iranian musician who was known for his mastery of the tar and the setar, two stringed instruments from Persian classical music. He was born in Gorgan, in a cultured family in which both parents were teachers. His older brother encouraged him to learn the tar, and in 1964 he won first prize at the Iranian festival for young musicians. A year later he began at the Persian national conservatoire in Tehran, where Habibollah Salehi and Ali Akbar Shahnazi were his teachers. Abdollah Davami taught him the radif, the traditional repertoire, and Said Hormozi taught him the setar.

Music and breakthrough

Lotfi played in the orchestra of the Department of Fine Arts, studied at the University of Tehran and after graduating in 1973 taught there himself. He co-founded the Shayda Ensemble and led, among other things, the centre that preserved and disseminated traditional Persian music. From 1978 to 1980 he was head of the university's music school. He then lived for two years in Italy and from 1986 in the United States, and performed in Asia, Europe and North America.

Influence

He made many recordings, solo and with great Iranian musicians such as Mohammad Reza Shajarian, Shahram Nazeri, Hossein Alizadeh and Parviz Meshkatian. He made a record with the singer Hengameh Akhavan. Lotfi is regarded as one of the greatest contemporary masters of the tar and setar and as one of the figures who renewed Persian classical music in recent decades.

Listening

Discography

Studio albums

• 1996Mystery of Love
• ?Hengameh Akhavan & Mohammad Reza Lotfi