The Mehregan Organizing Committee is pleased to announce that the 15th Annual Persian Festival of Autumn (Mehregan 2011) is scheduled for Saturday and Sunday, October 1 – 2, 2011 at the Lakeside Lagoon Park in Irvine, California.

Since 1994, volunteers from several organizations in Southern California have gathered annually to create an extraordinary outdoor family event that includes an array of activities such as arts & crafts, music, poetry, live performances, dance, children’s activities, and ethnic food. The number of participants has grown steadily over the years to more than 20,000 attendees.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Mehregan (Mehr-e-gan) is a Persian Festival of Autumn to honor the mythical Goddess Mehr (Mitra) for her triumph over ignorance and darkness in the name of love, knowledge, and commitment. Mehregan is also a tribute to nature, the change in seasons, and a time of Fall Harvest. It has been celebrated for the past 6,000 years in the land of Persia.

Further information regarding the festival including sponsorship, business and art display booths, entertainment and volunteer opportunities is available on the web at www.nipoc.org or calling NIPOC at (949) 851-3993.

Mehregan is a non-profit, nonpolitical, and non-religious event organized by the Mehregan Organizing Committee of NIPOC (Network of Iranian-American Professionals of Orange County) and volunteers from other organizations within the community.

Mehregan 2011 Organizing Committee
Network of Iranian-American Professionals of Orange County (NIPOC)
(949) 851-3993

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1. United Kingdom – Edinburgh Iranian Festival 2011
2. 2011 Sundance Film Festival Presents Circumstance by Maryam Keshavarz

EIF aims to raise awareness of Iranian culture and helps to integrate it with other cultures in Scotland.  There are seven categories (arts, books, comedy, film, food, lectures, and music) with events taking place in venues across Edinburgh.

The festival is being organized by a dedicated team of volunteers.

Opening Ceremony

- Lecture by Professor the Baroness Haleh Afshar
The event will involve a keynote lecture by Professor the Baroness Haleh Afshar, from Politics and Women’s Studies in University of York. Professor the Baroness Haleh Afshar serves as a Crossbench Peer in the House of Lords. Professor Afshar will be delivering a lecture on British/Iranian/Muslim identity, a topic very close to the essence of Edinburgh Iranian Festival. The ceremony will include free refreshment, live piano music, and a private viewing of the Bazaar at the end of the ceremony.

Professor the Baroness Haleh Afshar

Arts

- An exhibition by two contemporary Iranian artists, Maryam Hashemi and Haleh Jamali, exploring issues around cultural identity.

By Maryam Hashemi

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By Haleh Jamali

- Photography Exhibitions
Photos by a number of Iranian photographers, , with various parts of Iran or the Iranian culture as the subject matter. The list of artists confirmed to date include: Roxana Pope, Vida Sherkat, Sara Mohseni, Mehrdad Azmin, Bahar Azazdi, Maryam Ghorban-Karimi.

- School Exhibition
An exhibition at the Edinburgh Persian School, displaying the work of the pupils learning Persian there.

Mini Iranian Bazaar

- A mini Iranian bazaar, with various stalls selling Iranian products such as: accessories, handicrafts, musical instruments, postcards & greeting cards, CDs & Tapes, DVDs, food products, as well as a cafe/tea house.

The bazaar will contain a Cafe/Tea House (چایخانه), with a collection of Iranian snacks, as well as tea and coffee. The Tea House is hoping to include Iranian hot soup (Aash Reshteh – آش رشته) as well as other popular snacks and sweets. Cakes and sweets by the Green Gable Bakery will also be available at the Cafe.

Books

- Q&A and Book Reading: Ctesias at the Court of the Great King

- Books about Iran Available at Blackwell’s

- Wine & Poetry
Bring your own bottle of wine (or flask of tea) and your favourite poem of one of Iran’s or Scotland’s well known poets. There will be distinguished guests attending this poetry night, such Iranian poets Soheila Ghodstinat , Mehri Kashani and Lobat Vala. Wine and poetry are two things that have been found side by side in Persian poems, and they shall unite once again in Scotland.

- Storytelling from Shahnameh
Shahnameh (or The Book of Kings) is an enormous poetic opus written by the Iranian poet Ferdowsi around 1000 AD and is a national epic of the Persian-speaking world. It tells the mythical and historical past of Greater Iran  from the creation of the world up until the Islamic conquest of Iran in the 7th century. We will be telling some of the stories contained within this masterpiece in English. Children and adults are both welcome.

Shahnameh Characters

Comedy
A comedy showcase by 3 British/Iranian comedians, Patrick Monahan, Peyvand Khorsandi and Sam Farzaneh. The comedy show will be held twice on the same night, at the glamorous venue of Voodoo Rooms. Refreshments can be bought at the various bars at the Voodoo Rooms before and after each show.

- Patrick Monahan
Patrick was born in 1976 in Ahvaz, Iran and is an Irish-Iranian stand-up comedian.

Patrick Monahan

- Peyvand Khorsandi
Peyvand Khorsandi is an Iranian-born journalist and a stand-up comedian who lives in London.

Peyvand Khorsandi

- Sam Farzaneh
Sam is a professional photographer for the BBC World Service and an exciting newcomer stand-up comedy.

Sam Farzaneh

- Patrick Monahan
Childern’s Comedy Hour , a comedy shown by Patrick Monahan, suitable for both children and adults.

Patrick Monahan

Iranian Film Festival

Filmhouse cinema – This film festival is part of a Middle Eastern film festival which will be a pre-event to the 2011 Middle East Festival of Spirituality and Peace.

Lectures

- Series of Lectures on Ancient Persia
As part of the 2011 Edinburgh Iran Festival, and following on from last year’s success, we invite you to a series of themed lectures presented by academic specialists from across Scotland’s universities. The lectures will explore the history of ancient Persia and its legacy in the modern world. Organized by Dr Lloyd Llewellyn‐Jones, a specialist in Achaemenid history and culture, the Persia Lecture Series 2011 is sure to be a highlight of the Festival. Come early to get a seat!

Dr Lloyd Llewellyn Jones

Topics
Cyrus the Great: Dreams and Distortions
Persepolis and its Archive
Coins in the Achaemenid Persian Empire
Tourism, Marketing and Modern Iran

- Talk on Persian Tiles
Lecture by Friederike Voigt, the Senior Curator of Middle East & South Asia Department of World Cultures in the National Museums Scotland.

- Talk on Iranian Carpets
Persian Rug Village presents a lecture and exhibition on Persian carpets as part of the Edinburgh Iranian Festival 2011.

Music

- Magham Ensemble & Dunya Ensemble
A traditional music concert by the groups Dunya Ensemble and Magham Ensemble. Both groups play traditional Iranian instruments including tar, setar, oud, santour, and various percussions, as well as vocals.

Dunya Ensemble

Magham Ensemble showcases musical traditions from the different ethnicities in Iran. Dunya Ensemble plays Middle Eastern and Iranian music, although the band is formed of musicians from UK and beyond.

Magham Ensemble

- Club Persia, Ceilidh & Live Music by GOL
A fusion between Scottish and Iranian music, at the glamorous Voodoo Rooms, with live music by the bands GOL and a Scottish Ceilidh as well as Iranian Pop Music by live DJs. Scottish and Iranian dance instructions will also be provided on the night.

GOL

GOL
The Edinburgh based 6-piece UK/ Iranian jazz, world, electronica band GOL was selected as part of the Scottish Jazz Expo at the Edinburgh Jazz Festival 2010. For the Iran festival GOL will be playing new material from their upcoming Album to be released in March 2011.

Click here to view the embedded video.

- Santour Music Classes
Learn how to play the beautiful Persian musical instrument of Santour, through introductory lessons during the Iranian Festival but the leader of the band Dunya Ensemble, Dr. Bouda Vosough Ahmadi.

Food

Special Iranian menus will be served during the festival period at three restaurants in Edinburgh. Make sure you visit all three restaurants as each one will be offering a different kind of Iranian cuisine.

- Ti Amo
An Italian restaurant opposite the Festival Theatre. The restaurant will be serving Iranian cuisine in a designated area with Iranian decoration, prepared specially for the festival. Please contact the restaurant for more information on their Iranian menu.

- Sabor Sito
A South American Coffee and Juice Bar near Edinburgh University George Square campus. Iranian dishes will be served at this cafe/restaurant during the Iranian Festival. Please contact the restaurant for more information on their Iranian menu.

- Iranian Tea House & Documentary Series
Drop into the nomadic tent at the Persian Rug Village to enjoy a cup of tea at their new “Tea House” (چایخانه). A series of documentaries will be screened during this period, helping you to discover various part of Iran, while enjoying your cup of tea inside the nomadic tent. Persian teas, green tees, fruit teas, and various other types of teas will be served in the tea house.

- Iranian Tea House at the Bazaar
The bazaar will contain a Cafe/Tea House (چایخانه), with a collection of Iranian snacks, as well as tea and coffee. The Tea House is hoping to include Iranian hot soup (Aash Reshteh – آش رشته) as well as other popular snacks and sweets. Cakes and sweets by the Green Gable Bakery will also be available at the Cafe

Games & Sports

- Persian Pub Quiz
A Pub Quiz with questions on Iran at the Greenmantle. Prizes include concert tickets, Filmhouse Cinema vouchers, money to spend at the bar, and more. Come as a team (6 people max. per team) or as an individual and join a team on the night.

- Yoga Classes
Yoga classes in Farsi and English, by one of Iran’s most experienced Yoga teachers, with over 30 years of teaching experience. She has certificates from Sivananda Yoga Vedanta centres headquarter in Canada and Master in Yoga, Yoga Acharya, since 1999.

- 5 Aside Football Match

Sponsors

- How to sponsor our festival
If you would like to sponsor the festival, please contact us by e-mailing info@ediranfest.co.uk. If you are an individual, you can donate to our festival by writing a cheque to ‘Edinburgh Iranian Festival’ and/or getting in touch by e-mail.

- A few of sponsors

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The festival is organised by a dedicated team of volunteers who won’t be receiving any monies given to our special event. All monies will go towards funding events or future events organised EUPS.

e-mail:  info@ediranfest.co.uk
Edinburgh Iranian Festival 2011

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Join Kiosk at the intimate setting of Yoshi’s in San Francisco to hear Kiosk’s new songs! and fresh new sound! Kiosk will be joined on stage by notable guest musicians, including Paul Mehling of Hot Club of San Francisco.

Considered to be the most influential Iranian rock band since the 1979 Revolution, KIOSK is known for its smart and satirical lyrics, as well as its unique sound that seamlessly blends rock, blues, gypsy jazz, and Iranian folk music.

After Kiosk was prevented from performing in public or publishing recordings due to their “inappropriate” lyrics, the band members re-grouped outside Iran in 2005.

Named  “Best Blues Band of 2008″ by the World Academy of Arts, Literature, and Media, Kiosk has since released three albums and toured North America, Europe and Australia.

Click here to view the embedded video.

In this video clip Mostafa Heravi used and adjusted images of the beautiful film The Color of Pomegranates by Sergei Parajanov (Soviet Union, 1968). Mostafa was inspired by this film and the fact that the song ” ey Yarom Bia ” ( Ayy Yorum Biyo ) originally comes from the Tajikistan (Badakhshan) singer Muboraksho . Heravis intention was to create an artistic video clip that merges the content of the song and film.

Kiosk

Tickets

8pm & 10pm shows
$35 open seating, $40 assigned seating
yoshis.com

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Presenting a sampling of Persian poets, such as Jalāl ad-Dīn Muḥammad Balkhī, Baba Taher, Shams e Maghrebi, and Mohammad-Reza Shafiei Kadkani, among others.

Sara Goudarzi Vocal (poetry)

Sara Goudarzi is a New York City writer and performer of poetry. She was born in Tehran and grew up in Iran, Kenya, and the US. Her nonfiction and poetry have appeared in The Adirondack Review, National Geographic News, The Christian Science Monitor, Terry and Drunken Boat, among others. She is the founder and co-editor of /One/ The Journal of Literature, Art and Ideas. Currently, Sara is working on a first novel. Her CD, Oryan, Selected Poems of Baba Taher, in collaboration with Kees van den Doel, is available on CD Baby. Sara’s website is www.saragoudarzi.com.

Aida Shahghasemi Vocal (singing) & Daf

Aida Shahghasemi recently moved to New York City. She is a traveler between Iran and the States in order to play with individuals and ensembles in Tehran, Minneapolis (where she resided prior to New York), and most recently, New York. She learned the Daf from Amir Samadi and has worked on the Persian Classical Vocal repertoire under the supervision of Parissa.

Sinan Gündoğdu Saz & Oud

Sinan Gündoğdu is a musician from Turkey based in New York. He plays the Oud, Saz (Baglama) and often performs with various Flamenco musicians and other fusion bands around NY.

Zoraspace
315 4th Avenue
Brooklyn NY
718-832-4870
contact@zoraspace.com

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Sunday, February 28, 2010 – Washington, DC
Sunday, February 13, 2010 – Berkeley, CA

This edition of Masters of Persian Music features two of the most important figures in Persian classical music touring with the next generation of musical masters! Kayhan Kalhor on kamancheh and Hossein Alizadeh on tar are joined by remarkable young vocalist Hamid Reza Nourbakhsh.

Funded in part by the D.C. Commission on the Arts & Humanities, an agency supported in part by National Endowment for the Arts

Alizadeh is considered an inspiration to an entire generation of Iran’s musical culture. Trained in composition, performance and musicology at the Universities of Tehran and Berlin, he also studied with the ostads (maestros) of Persian music including Ali Akbar Khan Shahnazi, Nur Ali Borumand, Abdollah Davami, Mahmood Karimi and Houshang Zarif.

Kayhan Kalhor and Hossein Alizadeh

Alizadeh has been both conductor and soloist with the Iranian National Radio and Television Orchestra. He founded the Aref Ensemble and performed with the Shayda Ensemble, both dedicated to the promotion and advancement of Iranian classical music. Alizadeh has recorded the entire body of the radif (a core set of works made up of about 200 short modal pieces called gushehs) based on the
interpretation of Mirza Abdollah (1843-1918), a noted court musician and master of both the Persian setar (a four-stringed plucked lute) and the tar.

Alizadeh has himself composed many works of contemporary and neo-classical Iranian music including “Hessar,” “Ney Nava” and “Song of Compassion” and film scores including Gabbeh, A Time for Drunken Horses and, most recently, Turtles Can Fly. Alizadeh has performed extensively throughout the United States, Europe and Asia and has appeared on many radio and television programs around the
world. He has taught at the University of Tehran, the Tehran Music Conservatory and the California Institute of the Arts.

Kayhan Kalhor is an internationally acclaimed kamancheh (spike-fiddle) virtuoso and has played a leading role in popularizing Persian music in the West. A member of Yo-Yo Ma’s Silk Road Project, his compositions appear on all three of the ensemble’s albums and three of his recent recordings have been nominated for Grammys. Said the New York Times last season, “When Mr. Kalhor performed, it
sounded like a conversation among several instruments, with the varying timbres at times evoking the wailing pleas of disconsolate lovers. From a simple, muted beginning, the music became more intense and embellished, as ornate melodies and ornaments unfolded with calligraphic detail above ostinato bass patterns.”

Kalhor began his musical studies at the age seven and at 13 was invited to work with the National Orchestra of Radio and Television of Iran, where he performed for five years. At 17 he began working with the Shayda Ensemble of the Chavosh Cultural Center, the most prestigious arts organization in Iran at the time.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Kalhor has traveled extensively throughout Iran, studying the music of its many regions, especially of Khorason and Kordestan. He has soloed with a number of leading ensembles, including the New York Philharmonic and the Orchestre National de Lyon, and is co-founder of the renowned ensembles Dastan, Ghazal: Persian & Indian Improvisations and Masters of Persian Music.

Kalhor has composed works for Iran’s most renowned vocalists Mohammad Reza Shajarian and Shahram Nazeri and has performed and recorded with Iran’s greatest instrumentalists. Kayhan has also composed music for television and film and was most recently featured on the soundtrack of Francis Ford Coppola’s Youth Without Youth in a score on which he collaborated with Osvaldo Golijov. Last season, composer John Adams invited Kalhor to perform a solo recital at Carnegie Hall as part of his Perspectives Series and in the same year Kalhor appeared on a double bill at Lincoln Center’s Mostly Mozart Festival.

The Masters of Persian Music ensemble also includes vocalist Hamid Reza Nourbakhsh, a leading disciple of Mohammad Reza Shajarian. Accompanists are M.R. Ebrahimi (barbat or oud, plucked lute) Alireza Hosseini (tombak, single-headed goblet-shaped drum), Rouzbeh Rahimi, (santur, a hammered dulcimer) and Siamak Jahangiry (ney, flute).

Kennedy Center Tickets:
Sunday, February 28, 2010 – Washington, DC

Washington Performing Arts Society

The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts

Berkeley’s Zellerbach Hall Tickets:
Sunday, February 13, 2010 – Berkeley, CA

Cal Performance

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