Alireza Feyz Bashipour

Life and education

Alireza Feyz Bashipour was born in Kermanshah in January/February 1966. His first tanbur teacher was his father, Gholamhossein Feyz Bashipour, a researcher of his native region; it was under his guidance that Alireza came to know the instrument as a child.

He went on to learn the maqams of the tanbur (the traditional melodic pieces of the tanbur repertoire) from a number of leading masters, among them Taher Yarveysi, Esmaeil Khan Masghati, Seyed Vali Hosseini, Seyed Ghasem Afzali, Seyed Mahmoud Alavi, Seyed Mohammad Ahmadi, Seyed Amrollah Shahebrahimi and Darvish Abedin Khademi.

Feyz Bashipour is a graduate of the Faculty of Fine Arts in Tehran.

Artistic career

Years of work and research in Iranian music have shaped his distinctive style of playing, which can be heard clearly on the album Avaz-e Asatiri (Shahnameh-ye Kordi) (“The Mythical Song – The Kurdish Shahnameh”; the Shahnameh is the Persian Book of Kings), sung by Shahram Nazeri.

Together with Master Nazeri he has given many concerts in Iran and abroad, including in the United States, France, Sweden and Japan. Another of his works is the album Jameh-ye Rangin (“The Colourful Garment”), with vocals by Bijan Kamkar and Najmeh Tajaddod.