Farhad Bahrami, electric ûd and compositions
Hafez Modirzadeh, saxophones
John-Carlos Perea, electric bass
Amir Abbas Etemadzadeh, tombak and daf
Keshav Batish, drums

$25 cover charge at the door (cash, please)
BYOB.  Reservations, call 415-586-3733.

Born to Iranian teachers on Fullbright scholarships to the U.S., Farhad Bahrami’s childhood was spent in Texas, Tehran, and Oxford. In 1979, he came to San Diego to study engineering at San Diego State University, graduating in 1984 with a bachelor’s in music (composition) and computer science, receiving a master’s in music (ethnomusicology) from SDSU in 2007, having pursued his interests in music in parallel to his career in software. In San Diego, he brought Persian music to the experimental Trummerflora Collective and was co-founder and musical director of Jazmahalis, an ensemble that mixed elements of Persian folk music (mahali) with jazz, recording two albums: one of original pop and dance tunes, and another based on the poetry of Nima Ushij and Fereidoon Moshiri. He also co-founded the group Darvak and began performing with his Electric Ûd Trio. His Dornob project, a cross-generational Persian dastgah band, was formed in 1985, playing Persian classical, folk, and original dastgah music with mixed instrumentation (East/West, acoustic/electric) in the spirit of postmodern world jazz. According to Bahrami, “No one plays our style of jazz-influenced Persian classical music — not here, not in Iran.”

Prof. Bahrami is in San Francisco this week at the invitation of the Center for Iranian Diaspora Studies at San Francisco State University, and in addition to tonight’s performance at Bird & Beckett with SFSU faculty members Hafez Modirzadeh and John-Carlos Perea, will lecture and perform on Friday, March 10th in the CIDS’s ongoing Women. Life. Freedom. project.