Sussan Deyhim is an Iranian composer, vocalist and performance artist. She is internationally known for creating a unique sonic and vocal language imbued with a sense of ritual and the unknown. She was part of the national dance company in Iran from the age of thirteen and she traveled all across Iran studying with master folk musicians and dancers. In 1976 she joined The Bejart Ballet in Europe.
Her music remains true to the spirit of her ancient heritage while pointing to the future with a very personal and poetic dramatic sensibility.
In 1980 she moved to New York embarking on a multifaceted career encompassing music, theatre, dance, media and film.
Sussan’s wide-ranging collaborations with leading artists from across the spectrum of contemporary art and music have included Ornette Coleman, Bobby McFerrin, Peter Gabriel, Eve Ensler, Bill Laswell, Jan Kaczmarek, DJ Spooky, Maurice Bejart, Shirin Neshat, Sophie Calle and her long time collaborator Richard Horowitz among others. She performs as a soloist with The Polish Radio Orchestra and the Krakow Philharmonic. She has performed her music at Lincoln Center Summer Festival, Carnegie Hall, Albert Hall, The Old Vic, Queen Elizabeth Hall, Royce Hall and many other major venues.
Sussan has appeared on many award winning film and television sound tracks Including The Last Temptation of Christ, The Stoning of Sorya M, The Kite Runner, Three Kings, Any Given Sunday, and Sleeper Cell. Her recent score for Tubruk, in collaboration with Richard Horowitz won the Golden Lion for best score from the Czech Academy of Film. Sussans’ many recordings include Mad Man of God, Logic of the Birds, Turbulent, Azax/Attra – Desert Equations, Shy Angle, Out of Phase andMajoun (Sony Classical) are now released on her label Venus Rising Records at http://sussandeyhim.com/.
Richard Horowitz is the founding artistic director of the Gnaoua Music Festival in Essaouira Morocco and was nominated for the American Academy of Arts and Letters Goddard Liberson Awardby Paul Bowles in 1982. He has recorded and performed with vocalist Sussan Deyhim since the early eighties. Their recordings and multimedia operas include Majoun (Sony Classical) Azax/Attra:Desert Equations, The Ghost of Ibn Sabbah and The Gift of Love (Deepak Chopra/Mother Teresa). He also collaborated with Deyhim and Shirin Neshat on the multimedia production Logic of the Birds produced by Lincoln Center, Art Angel in London and The Ortiga Festival in Siracusa Sicily. He is currently working on a new opera with Deyhim: Zarathustra’s Mother.
Karsh Kale is an Indian producer, composer and musician, known for melding the music of his heritage with the modern electronic club music of his American upbringing.
He has become a mainstay in Six Degrees Records’ expanding series of compilation CDs of which six have been released so far.
Kale’s third studio release, titled Broken English was released in the US on March 21, 2006 also under the Six Degrees Records label.
Kale is a prolific artist, willing to lend a hand, and drum, to a range of musicians from Herbie Hancock to DJ Spooky. He has collaborated with many well-known artists, including Bill Laswell, Zakir Hussain, Trilok Gurtu, Talvin Singh, Midival Punditz, among others.
In 2007, he collaborated with Anoushka Shankar to create Breathing Under Water[1], that blends Indian classical, electronica, dance and folk music.
Alan Kushan is an avant-garde musician and concert-performer of Persian/Iranian descent; musical composer; musical instrument-maker; actor; singer; and poet.
Alan is an internationally recognized Persian avant-garde “santurist”, and the leading exponent of the New Santur style. After passing through multifarious phases of musical composition and performance on his supremely delicate yet highly sophisticated musical instrument — his self-made hammer dulcimer or santur —, ranging from traditional Persian music, to fusions of Western classical and Persian mystical music, to jazz and world music, as well as futuristic and avant-garde music, Alan Kushan is still audaciously and earnestly experimenting in the musical realm. His techniques on his self-made santur are indeed altogether fascinating and breathtaking.
Spiced with the exotic traditions that infuse flamenco-gypsy, Middle Eastern, and Mediterranean folk interwoven with textures of classical, jazz, and Latin rhythms, composer and guitarist Hernan Romero‘s music is both sophisticated and accessible. It is sensuous, passionate, romantic and inescapably infectious.
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