Faisal Zedan is an Arabic music teacher and performer from Syria. He has been residing in the bay area since 2005, teaching and performing different genres of music from the Arab world and the Middle East. He plays the traditional drums; Derbakki, Riqq and frame drums.
Nicole Maria is a multi-award-winning dancer based out of Oakland, California. She has been studying, teaching, and performing contemporary and traditional forms of Arabic dance for over a decade. In 2019, she was a featured soloist in the prestigious San Francisco Ethnic Dance Festival, representing Egyptian Raqs Sharqi. Nicole teaches…
We at ACTA send our condolences to the family of master duduk artist Jivan Gasparyan, who passed away earlier this month at the age of 92. Jivan (sometimes spelled Djivan) was an Armenian musician of great accomplishment based in Sherman…
Persian traditional music
World music
Persian Setar Music
Thuluth, the most important script in traditional Arabic calligraphy (Islamic calligraphy), was developed in the 11th century. It is a large and elegant, cursive script, used in medieval times as architectural adornment, as well as for inscribing various texts and manuscripts. The unique capacity of the Thuluth style in creating…
Arabic Percussion
Sahab Motallebi began playing the tar (a six-stringed plucked instrument) as a child and attended the National Iranian Music Conservatory in Tehran, the Saint Petersburg Conservatory in Russia, and RGS University in Turkey. Mehrdad Jahangiri studied the Persian tar with master artist Sahab Motallebi in 2007 as part of …
Mohammad Nejad, a Persian-born master multi-instrumentalist, was born to a musical family in Tehran, Iran. As a young child, Persian classical music was passed down to him from his father. In Tehran he attended a special high school for musicians, later graduating from Fine Arts Academy in 1976, and in…
