Music, dance and culture

Barbad Music Project

The musical project "Barbad" is a concept of Reza, Hamid and Navid Mohsenipour. The three brothers have had an extensive musical career in Iran, including playing in the Tehran Symphony Orchestra and the Iranian Television Orchestra. They graduated from the Tehran Conservatory and then got a second degree at the Santa Cecilia Conservatory in Rome, city where they currently live.

Their project has been claimed in Italy with great interest and curiosity from people who love Iranian music, dance and culture.
The group works in two artistic directions: one is into the performance of traditional Persian music with typical instruments; the other one is the creation of a style that mixes Iranian musical culture with other musical generes from all over the world.

The name of the group comes from Barbad, a Persian musician from the Sasanian era, who lived during the reign of Cosroe II, from 590 to 628 AD.

Basis for their success, the artists and organisers have continued to work with great excitement, creating more innovative co-workings and performances. Actually, the project does not limit itself to pre-existing schemes and musical generes, but it's constantly searching for new horizons through what is the very essence of art: creativity.

At beginning, the project has worked with important exponents of Iranian music and dance, including the well-known dancer Shahrokh Moshkin Ghalam, with whom the group has performed during concerts in Europe, starting from the Philharmonic Academy in Rome and ending with the Philharmonic in Cologne.

The Barbad project has participated in major music festivals in Europe and around the world, including, for example, the 'Delta Jazz Festival' in Russia. Here the three brothers played with the Tetraphonia Orchestra and the Director of the Santa Cecilia Conservatory, Alfredo Santoloci.

"Barbad" proposes to extend its artistic panorama engaging with the most diverse genres of music and dance, paying particular attention to those that are more original and less known to the public. With this concept, the Barbad Project is open to co-operation with artists of different musical genres from all over the world.
Currently, the Mohsenipour brothers collaborate with the singer, harpist and composer Valeria Villeggia, the Algerian cellist Mehdi Elias Baba Ameur and the composer Alessandro Severa. This collaboration has brought many innovations to the group's artistic production. One of these is, for example, the use of different languages in the composition of their pieces. With this line-up, the project took part in the Roma Capitale music contest and won with an original song named "Roma Aeterna".

Recent and ongoing projects include co-working with Iranian singer Hossein Baharbin and Kamancheh player Nima Gilaki.

This cooperation between musicians of various backgrounds and nationalities has resulted in a style that fuses Eastern and Western traditions, overcomes cultural distances and defines a unique artistic personality.
All of this, of course, always proceed step by step with the performance of the traditional Persian repertoire.

An innovative and exciting research work, to be proposed to audiences sensitive to art and creativity in all countries of the world.