Hossein Omoumi was born in 1944 in Isfahan, Iran, and commenced his musical education singing with his father. At age 14, he studied the ney, the traditional reed flute of Iran.
At the same time as he was studying architecture, Hossein was accepted as a tutorial student at the National Superior Conservatory of Music in Tehran. He worked with maestros Mahmud Karimi and Farhad Fakhreddini, and subsequently went on to study with acclaimed ney master Hassan Kassaei.
His career as a performer has included appearances at many major festivals and concert halls in Europe and the United States.
A distinguished scholar and teacher of Persian music, he taught at the National Conservatory, Tehran University, and the Center for Preservation and Dissemination of Music in Tehran; the Center for Oriental Music Studies (CEMO) of Sorbonne University in Paris; and the ethnomusicology departments of the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA), and the University of Washington (UW) in Seattle.
Currently, he is the Maseeh Professor in Persian Performing Arts of Music at the University of California, Irvine (UCI). He has done wide-ranging research on the ney and Iranian percussion, and arranged and composed lessons to teach the standards of classical Persian music under the title of ‘Pish Radif.’
The movie Classical Persian Music – Hossein Omoumi from Isfahan to Irvine, that documents his goal to make classical Persian music widely available, was released in 2017, supported by the National Endowment for the Arts.
Discography:
Persian Classical Music, with Sima Bina (Nimbus Records, 1995)
Persian Classical Music, with Madjid Khaladj (Nimbus Records, 1995)
Improvisation in the Mahour Mo, with Madjid Khaladj (Al Sur, 1996)
Tale Of Love I – Esfahan (QuarterTone, 1999)
Tale Of Love II – Nava (QuarterTone, 2003)
Sarmast – Trance of Devotion, with Madjid Khaladj (Bâ Music Records, 2004)
Voices of Spring Avay – E Bahar (2009)
Earthly Exile (Mahoor Institute Of Culture & Arts, 2015)
Ateş-i Aşk, with Kiya Tabassian, and Ziya Tabassian (Z Ses Görüntü, 2016)
Author: Angel Romero
Angel Romero y Ruiz has dedicated his life to musical exploration. His efforts included the creation of two online portals, worldmusiccentral.org and musicasdelmundo.com. In addition, Angel is the co-founder of the Transglobal World Music Chart, a panel of world music DJs and writers that celebrates global sounds. Furthermore, he delved into the record business, producing world music studio albums and compilations. His works have appeared on Alula Records, Ellipsis Arts, Indígena Records and Music of the World.
