Mohammad-Reza Shajarian

Mohammad-Reza Shajarian (23 September 1940 - 8 October 2020) was an Iranian singer and great master of Persian traditional music. Shajarian started his singing career in 1959 at Radio Khorasan, rising to prominence in the 60-70s by appearing in Iran's most prestigious music radio program: Golha. Because of his father's opposition to singing, he started his career in the Golha program under the name Siavosh Bidkani. His main teachers were Ahmad Ebadi, Esmaeil Mehrtash, Abdollah Davami, Nour-Ali Boroumand and Faramarz Payvar. He also learned the vocal styles of singers from previous generations, including Taherzadeh, Zelli, Ghamar, Eghbal, Taj and Banan. He has cited legendary Persian tar soloist Jalil Shahnaz as highly influential to his development. Shajarian was fully familiar with playing Santour and making musical instruments. He was a master of Iranian calligraphy. Shajarian had collaborated with great Persian musicians such as Jalil Shahnaz, Ahmad Ebadi, Faramarz Payvar, Parviz Yahaghi, Ali Tajvidi, Farhang Sharif, Habibollah Badiei, Mohammad Reza Lotfi, Parviz Meshkatian, Hossein Alizadeh, Farhad Fakhreddini and Fereydoun Shahbazian. In 1999, UNESCO in France presented him with the Picasso Award and in 2006 with the UNESCO Mozart Medal. In March 2016, Shajarian revealed that he had had kidney cancer for 15 years. The treatments continued until he died on 8 October 2020 at the age of 80 at Jam Hospital in Tehran. He was buried at the Tomb of Ferdowsi in Tus, Mashhad.