The latest in the activities organized these past years around the exhibition of Ostad Elahi’s instruments at the New York Metropolitan Museum now include the full-length version of the film The Art of Ostad Elahi, featured on ostadelahi.com, Ostad Elahi’s official website.

The tanbur is back… A few months ago, in 2018, a couple of steps away from the oldest piano in the world, a showcase was inaugurated in the department of musical instruments at the Met (Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York). Dedicated to a few “famous musicians” of the 20th century, it featured a Benny Goodman clarinet next to a guitar that belonged to Andrés Segovia as well as one of Ostad Elahi’s tanburs, crafted by the lute maker Nariman, along with a video including explanations and archived images that harked back to the 2014-2015 Sacred Lute exhibit, that we covered here.

A lecture and a series of concerts presented on 16 November 2014 at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in conjunction with the exhibition The Sacred Lute: The Art of Ostad Elahi are now available in video on the website of the museum. This “Sunday at the Met” features an introduction by Ken Moore, Curator in Charge of the Department of Musical Instruments, a lecture by Jean During, Director of Research at the Centre de Recherche en Ethnomusicologie and performances by the Garcia-Fons Quartet and Parissa and Ensemble.

The musician, composer and writer Clive Bell dedicates his November column in the British music magazine The Wire to Ostad Elahi’s music and the current exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, “The Sacred Lute: The Art of Ostad Elahi”.

Ken Moore, Curator in charge of the Department of Musical Instruments at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, gives a tour of the exhibition “The Sacred Lute: The Art of Ostad Elahi” on NYC-ARTS’s latest episode.

John Schaefer showcases an excerpt of the special commemorative CD-book issued by the Metropolitan Museum and Harmonia Mundi for the exhibit, “The Sacred Lute: The Art of Ostad Elahi”, on the New Sounds programme of 30 September 2014 (Episode #3643), on WNYC.

An exhibit opens this week at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, wholly devoted to the musical heritage of Ostad Elahi.

The exhibition runs from Aug. 5 2014 to Jan. 11 2015. Exhibition Location: The Hagop Kevorkian Fund Special Exhibition Gallery, Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Hadj Nemat, Ostad Elahi’s father, passed away on 28 February 1920. The following two documents honour the memory of this great spiritual figure who also happened to be an inspired mystical poet. The first is Renaud Garcia-Fons and Claire Antonini’s musical tribute based on Hadj Nemat’s “Monajat”: it was recorded a the Maison de Radio France on February 25th. The second document, a poem entitled “Unfaithfulness of the World”, is one of the masterpieces of Hadj Nemat’s The Book of the Kings of Truths. The English translation we republish here was done by Martin Hoffman, on the basis of Leili Anvar’s French version.

Jean During, a specialist in Central Asia and author of numerous books, here describes the particular characteristics of Ostad Elahi’s music, putting it in relation with his spiritual teachings. The questions examined are the following: Why is Ostad Elahi recognized as the “master” of tanbur? To what extent and how did he reinvent its musical […]