TEHRAN-Iranian tar and setar virtuoso Keyvan Saket will perform at a concert in Tabriz, East Azarbaijan Province tomorrow along with his group, Vaziri Music Band.

The concert will be held at the amphitheater of Tabriz petrochemical Complex in the northwestern city on Tuesday, Honaronline reported.

Atabak Atri will sing Persian and Azeri songs from the compositions of Saket as well as folk songs at the performance.

Saket, 62, is an acclaimed Iranian composer and music researcher. He has held many concerts in Iran, Canada and Australia. He established Vaziri Band in 1996 and has since performed numerous pieces with them. He has also worked with many great Iranian musicians, including the late Parviz Meshkatian.

Saket is the fastest tar and setar (traditional Iranian instruments) player in Iran. He has always believed in introducing Iranian traditional music to the world. One of his ways of doing so was to promote through his shows what Iranian instruments were capable of playing.

To demonstrate this, he tried to perform well-known pieces from classical composers like Beethoven, Mozart, Paganini, Vivaldi, Strauss, and more. This mission seemed impossible at first; tar was played with plectrum and most of western classical pieces with the violin - a bowed string instrument. This meant that a tar player had to have a very quick plectrum to keep a rapid repetition of one note, or a tremolo. And yet, Saket was the only one with an impossibly blistering speed.

Along with his traditional albums, Saket released two modern albums that once again stunned everyone. In his albums, he performed extremely fast and complex pieces like “The Flight of the Bumblebee”. His astonishing performance at the International Music Exposition in France in 2006, showed the significance of tar and setar globally.

Saket was born in 1960 in Mashad. In 1989, he joined the Aref Ensemble under the leadership of the late musician composer Meshkatian; Saket’s collaboration with the ensemble continued steadily into 1996; during this period, they released several albums and performed extensively throughout Iran and abroad.

Around the same time, Saket established the Vaziri Music Band. The band’s primary goal was to bring about a revival of the traditional style of Iranian master Col. Alinaghi Vaziri.

Together, Saket and the Vaziri Band have performed on a regular basis in Iran; their works include pieces such as ‘Ey Vatan’ (Oh, Homeland), which is a dedication to the legacy of Vaziri.

SS/SAB