Friday 1 May 2026

Seymour Centre

Hamed Sadeghi

Review by Paul Neeson (Arts Wednesday)

In the darkest hour of this death-laden dusk, I feel it

a thousand springs of sun surging through my chest.

And in every corner of this barren salt desert of despair,

a thousand living forests rise

sudden, green, unstoppable.

Hamed Sadeghi is a multi-award-winning Persian-Australian tar player and composer, renowned for his ability to cross cultural boundaries and blend music traditions from the East and the West. The Tar is an Iranian stringed instrument from the lute family, typically found in the Middle East and Central Asia. It has a double bowl shaped body carved from mulberry wood. And the sound? That lies in some mysterious realm between an oud and a banjo, with some strings doubled in a way similar to a 12 string guitar. 

Convergence is the name of this one night only performance and also his new album billed as “Persian classical mastery and Western classical tradition meet on one stage.” Sadeghi collected a band of talented musicians for the occasion who delivered a hypnotic evening of a unique blend of two cultures. And the large contingent of the Persian diaspora in the crowd loved every minute of it.

Aida Manouchehrpour (soprano) sang what we were informed were classical Persian poems alongside contemporary poetry. For those of us in the audience who are unfamiliar with Farsi, unfortunately no translation was provided, but that didn’t hamper our enjoyment of the performance. (Apparently the translations appear in the CD liner notes). She sang mostly in a lower register, creating a dark and moody ambience for most of the numbers.

Sadeghi’s tar was the centrepiece of the ensemble, producing intricate rhythms, exotic scales and evocative eastern sound worlds. You could feel the heat of the desert, and smell the frankincense in the air. This in a backdrop of a western string trio that at times blended, and at others, contrasted.

The string trio, James Tarbotton (violin), Beth Condon (viola) and Freya Schack-Arnott (cello) mostly provided a warm bed which supported the timbres of the tar and voice, and on a few occasions provided some interesting rhythmic sections that interacted and interlaced with the tar and the percussion. My expectations were more like what I have heard from the National Arab Orchestra with dense call and response between soloists and a large string section. But this was something more intimate, creating a trance-like atmosphere. Violinist James Tarbotton stood out as really identifying with the Arab scale in some of his solo lines. This scale is subtly different in its microtonal divergences to the western one we are used to, but when you get it right as he did, it is obvious.

For me the other hero of the night was percussionist, Sohrab Kolahdooz, who made each drum in his diverse collection sing with the intricacies and nuances of a human voice. He managed to extract a complexity of rhythms and sounds that defied what was going on around him, but evoked and entirely different and oddly compatible sound world. From subtle finger taps to soft stroking of the skins eliciting sounds of a sandy desert, and producing unique tones from each and every square millimetre of the surfaces of drum, cymbal and skin. A true virtuoso!

Apart from one piece in the middle of the concert, it was an appropriately meditative, pensive and sombre affair. But I suppose in current times, to the Persian diaspora there aren’t many springs of sun in the death-laden dusk. 

Convergence has been released on ABC Classic label and is available now. Definitely worth a listen.