Rahman Asadollahi, the world’s foremost garmon player, teams up with the Orchestra of Azerbaijani Folkloric Music, conducted by nationally renown Professor Nariman Azimoff, and his brother master drummer Vehid Asadollahi, to feature some of the best-loved traditional Azeri music, poured out with profound sensitivity from Rahman’s 90 year-old garmon. The Itzak Perlman of garmon in 20th century, this master’s ability to move listeners is surpassed only by his ravishing original compositions, which plumb the depths of musical sensuality.
From the achingly romantic and heroic “Ay Giz” to nostalgic tender stirrings of “Gozum Yashla Domasin,” where trembling notes fall like tear drops at unwilled partings; from an intense lovers chase danced through a lively tumble of music in “Vessal” to the plaintive cries of the garmon cascading down a series of intricate improvisations in “Hedjran”, Asadollahi’s music is bound to steal your heart and transport you to a world where extreme beauty and pain find lingering union.
The first-prize winner among 650 players at the All European Accordion and Harmonica Championship in Switzerland in 1995, Asadollahi was a featured master artist at the first annual San Francisco World Music Festival in 2000. For 16 years, concert engagements have taken Asadollahi throughout the Republic of Azerbaijan, on Iranian and Azeri radio programs. Since 1985, he has toured and performed in Turkmenistan, England, France, Denmark, Switzerland, Austria, Germany, arriving to the US in 1999.
“Ana” was recorded with a 25 member Azerbaijani orchestra in Baku, Republic of Azerbaijan with the famed conductor Nariman Azimoff.
“Ana — Traditional Music of Azerbaijan” captures the passionate depths of the Azeri people — like deep rivers bursting at times into celebratory dancing. Plunging the heights and depths of human emotions, weaving and winding through corridors of time, Asadollahi sounds out every square inch of meaning in Azeri music. Always, Asadollahi finishes like a man emerging from his trials triumphant, hope-filled, and deeply changed, with the songs of his struggling people forever carved on his heart.
