Artist Profiles
Rahman Asadollahi
The first prize winner among 650 players at the All European Accordion and Harmonica Championship in Switzerland in 1995, Asadollahi who is a prolific composer was a featured master artist at the first annual San Francisco World Music Festival in 2000 and in 2004 he collaborated with the Kronos Quartet with a premiering commissioned composition by Door Dog Music Productions. He composed a new commissioned composition for this year's festival main event also.
Since 1985, he has toured and performed in Turkmenistan, England, France, Denmark, Switzerland, Austria, Germany, arriving to the US in 1999. Rahman Asadollahi plays the classical Mugham Music of Azerbaijan as well as the Azeri folk songs. A politically exiled artist since 1985, though, Asadollahi shares his people's story of repression. To hear his music is to taste the dreams and laments of the Azeri people, a mistreated people denied of their basic human rights. Though deep and profoundly tragic, his is a music that truly celebrates, is drunk on life, and marvels at the beauty of being alive in spite of suffering. Technically brilliant, he conveys an amazing understanding of human pain and glory.
Emotionally appealing, Azeri music is full of dramatic flares, trembling embellishments, cascading improvisations, and slow meandering descents ending in a swift punctual finish.
Duygu Bayar
Duygu Bayar is a 21 years old music teacher recently emigrated to US and is culturally active in the Kurdish community. She's graduate of Diyarbakir Fine Arts Music School. She has taught percussion to the Roma Children and vocal music to the Kurdish youth group Koma Denge Zaroken Amede who were singing 8 different languages. She was a volunteer music teacher at the Diyarbakir (Assyrian/Caldean) Church. She participated in the SFWMF 2007 with her youth group during their US tour.
Wanpeng Guo
Wanpeng Guo studied sheng at the China Symphony Conservatory in Beijing with Professor Zhoufu Wu from 1975-1979. He was the former principle sheng player at the China Central National Orchestra. He received honors as one of the First Class Performer by the Department of Culture of the People of Republic of China in 1997. Guo was former member of the Asia Orchestra Ensemble, which consisted of top-notched musicians form Japan, Korea and China.
As member of the China Central Orchestra, Guo took part in a seventeen-city tour in 1997 to the United States, which included performance with world renowned cellist Yoyo Ma at Carnegie Hall. It is extraordinary to listen to the sound of the sheng, an instrument used dated back before Confucius' time. Guo's playing is pungent, and yet delicate.
Phillip Hagopian
Phillip began his musical interest at the age of three. He played various instruments and listened to Armenian and Middle Eastern music for his inspiration. At the age of seven, he began his formal musical training on the piano. Because of his strong interest in playing the oud, master luthier, Peter Kyvelos of Massachusetts, custom built a smaller sized oud for Phillip to play. Phillip self-taught himself by studying video tapes of his grandfather, Richard Hagopian, who is a well known Armenian American oud player throughout the United States. In 2006, Richard and Phillip received a grant from the Alliance for California Traditional Arts, for a one year course of intensive training. Through these studies, Phillip learned traditional modes and rhythms from the Middle East as well as musical pieces which were written by various Armenian composers.
Phillip continues to play the oud for various programs and is often accompanied on the drum by his younger brother, Andrew Hagopian. He continues to study the piano and competes in local and statewide competitions annually. He also plays the clarinet in his school band. Phillip is thirteen years old and resides in Fresno, California. Nine years old Andrew Hagopian who plays the dumbeg drum will accompany Phillip for this performance.
Berfin Oztoprak
Making her singing debut, nine-year-old Berfin will sing songs in the Kurdish language. Berfin is an upcoming talented singer presently living in San Francisco. She'll sing a few Kurdish songs accompanied with her mother Ozden Oztoprak playing the long necked folk instrument saz.
Rumen Shopov
Rumen "Sali" Shopov hails from Gotse Delchev, a crossroads town in southwest Bulgaria neighboring the borders of Greece and Macedonia. An astonishing master of the tambura (long-necked mandolin), bouzouki, and a virtuosic drummer and vocalist as well, Rumen was the concertmaster of the Nevrokopski Folk Ensemble, Bulgaria's first national folk ensemble, for more than 20 years. He was also a lead member of two of the Pirin regions hottest bands: "Shturo Make" and "Orkestar Orbita." In the fall of 2002, Rumen toured across America with the Kolevera Folk Ensemble. Now residing in the San Francisco Bay Area, he has assembled a band that captures and showcases the sparkling fretwork, incendiary rhythms, and expressive soul of Rumen's native Turkish-Romani ("Gypsy")/Bulgarian musical tradition. Rumen released a CD in the US two years ago.
Riccardo Tesi
A composer, an instrumentalist and a researcher: these are the aspects of the complex and multifaceted musical personality of Riccardo Tesi, a true pioneer of ethnic music in Italy. From his debut in 1978 with Caterina Bueno, strongly rooted in the folk tradition, to the present day collaborations, the musical curriculum of Tesi, born in Pistoia, is characterised by a precious continuity based on eager passion and curiosity that have led him to compare his Tuscan heritage to the Italian, Basque, English, French and Madagascar traditions, as well as to jazz, liscio (Italian popular dance music) and songwriting.
His instrument, the diatonic accordion (melodeon), is an example of perfect symbiosis with his conception of memory. For the first time in Italy, he even dedicated a whole record to this instrument, a forerunner of the accordeon. What is amazing about Tesi is his easily recognizable style, allowing his concertina to speak both an archaic and modern language, widening the vocabulary and the technique of an instrument for a long time preserved as part of a traditional heritage. A brilliantly outdated choice that places Tesi, thanks to his lyrical and virtuoso skills, among those who have brought the accordeon and all the instruments alike back to their dignity all over the world. In this respect, in 2002 he was given the "La voce d'oro" prize in Castelfidardo.
In 1992 he founded Banditaliana, at present rated as one of the most important groups in the international world music scene. Since 1980 Tesi has devoted himself to teaching, searching for an adequate pedagogic approach to popular music instruments, with specific regard to diatonic accordion (melodeon), about which he wrote, together with Roberto Trombesi, the first Italian handbook, "L'organetto diatonico", published by BËrben.
Birol Topaloglu
Birol Topaloglu is one of the foremost folk musicians in Turkey today. He was born to a Laz family, in the small village Apso, which is on the North Eastern shore of the Black Sea coast of Turkey, near the Georgian border. He grew up speaking the Lazuri language at home. He started to sing in both Turkish and Lazuri, as well as explorations in instrumentation drew serious attention. After having worked as an electronic engineer, at home in Turkey and abroad, he chose his music as his primary career. He's multi instrumentalist and an exceptional singer.
Birol Topaloglu started collecting the lullabies, and the ballads sung by his mother. In 1997 he recorded the music of the Laz highlanders in Turkey. Later he traveled to Georgia to study the music of the Laz and the Megrels there. He used, for the first time among the Laz in Turkey, a string instrument called the "Chonguri" and a wind instrument called "Philili". Birol also helped to develop a percussion instrument, inspired by the wood used to build beehives, adding to the repertoire of Laz folk instruments.
Birol Topaloglu is also an archivist and a composer of music based on the traditional motifs of the Laz minority in the Black Sea area. He will participate in the festival concert as well as give lecture demonstrations and workshops playing his bagpipe (tulum or guda), kemence (fiddle) and drums. He's best known as an outstanding vocalist and he'll teach his music in workshops in the Bay Area.
So far he has released 4 solo studio CDs and an archival recording of Laz music. Birol Topaloglu just released a new Desthani music album in 2008. Desthanis are epic sung stories of the Laz people. Birol has been collecting, learning and singing old and contemporary Desthanis for more than a decade. There has never been a collection of recording of the Laz Desthanis.
Wei Wang
Wei's musical career started when his father taught him the yangqin, the Chinese hammered dulcimer, at the age of 4. His musical talent and accomplishment in the instrument was acknowledged at the China Music Conservatory, where he attended middle and high school from 1983-1989.
After graduating in 1993 from the Shanghai Conservatory of Music, Wei joined the Shanghai Song and Dance Ensemble, where for several years he performed the dagu (large drum) repertoire and regional folk opera percussion styles with the ensemble as their only percussion soloist. His featured instruments included the large drums, gongs, cymbals, woodblocks, stone chimes and clappers. In 1996, he was awarded a two-year Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst (DADD) scholarship, which allowed him to study and perform in Berlin, where he attended the Berlin Conservatory of Music, becoming the school's first student ever to pursue a double major program in both jazz drums and hand drums/world percussion. After his graduation in 2000, Wei was invited by the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra to perform as a guest bangu soloist with Maestro Kent Nagano in the "Rhythm and Dance" concert.
Zhang Yu
Zhang Yu, a member of China Musician Association, and an examiner in the Chinese National Music Performing Examination Committee, graduated from the Central Conservatory of Music of China. From 1986 to 1999, he was a suona soloist and a vice chair of treble suona section at Chinese National Orchestra, one of the top Chinese orchestras in China. In 1987, he won First Place at The Fourth Goat City Music Invitation Competition. In 1989, he won Second Place at National Instrumental Music Mountain City Cup TV Award Competition. Yu has published a CD and a number of research papers, and visited Germany, Holland, Italy, Switzerland and many Asian countries.
Xiao Feng Zhang
Raised in a musical family, Zhang started music lesson with her father at an early age of seven. Her formal training began in 1978 with erhu master Liu Zhen Gua. At 17, she was accepted into the Central Conservatory of Junior Division in Beijing. Two years later, she was accepted into the Conservatory College Program without the strict audition. She studies under the nationally acclaimed Professor Lan Yu Song. She graduated from the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing in 1984.
After graduation from the Conservatory, Zhang joined the National Tradition Orchestra of China (1984-1997). The Orchestra performed all over China and has performed in many countries in Southeast Asia, Europe and the United States. Zhang's style of playing is enthusiastic, elegant and carries the listener's emotions through the passages.
California Youth Chinese Symphony
California Youth Chinese Symphony (CYCS) is a non-profit organization serving the Bay Area and nation wide. It has a mission of promoting musical diversity and enriching cultural lives of our communities by introducing Chinese traditional music and instruments. It provides high quality and diversified education on Chinese traditional instruments and creatively integrate East-West music using both Chinese and Western instruments.
Currently CYCS has about 100 students in its instrument training and orchestra programs. Members of CYCS have been very active in performing for the community such as in Moon Festival, Fundraiser for the Home of the Elderly – San Mateo and NBC Olympic Viewing Party. CYCS is currently the only organization authorized by the China Central Conservatory of Music to host Chinese Instrument Standard Grade Examination in the United States and the first examination will be held in November 2008.
Kurdish Youth Chorus
Newly founded and under the leadership of Duygu Bayar San Francisco Bay Area Kurdish Youth Chorus is a large group of children who are keeping alive the Kurdish songs and dance. They perform traditional beloved Kurdish songs in several dialects.
Paintbrush Diplomacy, Char and Rudy Pribuss
Paintbrush Diplomacy is the lifelong project of Char and Rudy Pribuss, a husband and wife team committed to "sharing the fruits of children's creativity with people around the world." Char and Rudy began their travels in the early 1970's. Char was a professional artist and Rudy was a retired engineer. In the early days, Char set up her easel wherever they stayed and captured the flavor of each place. Before long, she and Rudy noticed that curious children always gathered around, interested in Char's work and eager to make and share their own paintings. Although they rarely spoke the same language, Char and Rudy loved the children who came, and they actually got to know some of them. They collected the children's artwork casually, and eventually they began to exchange paintings with children in other cities and countries. A great idea was born.
Officially founded in San Mateo, CA in 1975, Paintbrush Diplomacy became a 501(c)3 Non-Profit Public Benefit Corporation with tax-exempt status in 1986. Since then, Paintbrush Diplomacy has become a San Francisco Bay Area success story. The Art Exchange grew to include 10,000 children in 100 countries annually. Paintbrush Diplomacy has been funded by, and has art exhibits with, the United Nations, UNICEF, the Smithsonian Institution, the National Geographic Society, VISA International, Rotary International, the Peace Corps, the World Affairs Council, and many other regional organizations
