Hossein Alizadeh, tar Madjid Khaladj, tombak 25 Years of Extraordinary Collaboration / Volume I : RASPANJGAH Liner note by Nader Family We all have wondered what era would be the best to have lived in. Most choices focus on physical comfort and civility of eras. When it comes to the arts, and especially music, it would have been wonderful to have witnessed Bach and Mozart live as they freed Western music from canonical compositions which were limited to certain rules.   But if we lived in such eras we would have missed the even more fundamental changes that the Alizadeh and Khaladj collaboration of the last 25 years has brought to an even more strictly canonical system. It is inspiring to see that rules and roles of players and their instruments have been freed. This freedom has shattered the idea that Persian modal system is limited in its progress because it is mono-vocal, where pieces had a single voice remained constrained to the framework of the dastgah (modal system) and its gushes (melodic repertoire). Since trespass between even gushe’s is very difficult and few successful examples have ever been  presented, this had become a rule, don’t trespass, as you don’t want to risk awkward results.   One particular reason had been the inability to overlay various gushe’s because their rhythms were often as incompatible as their melodic structures. It is truly a gift to be in this era where by some chance of events we have witnessed the impossible. Hossein Alizadeh and Madjid Khaladj through different routes have arrived in the nearly improbable point of having found ways to do exactly such overlays, in melodies and rhythms of adjacent or distant neighbor gushe’s. While Hossein Alizadeh has been expressing the possibility of melodic layering for several decades, the arrival of a percussionist who can further reinforce such a technique by similarly fluidly layering the rhythms of those gushe’s while the melodies moves about freely.   In this series we are reminded of our improbable luck to witness this duo. While the above Western masters did break the canons, their compositions are fixed in time. They are performed by other instrumentalists as concerts, with minor variations where the average person can’t generally perceive. On the other hand here we hear the development of a system where every performance is a unique and an impromptu composition. By their synergy, Alizadeh and khaladj are able intertwine melodies at will. Sometimes a melodic structure suggests the gushe in which Madjid Khaladj delivers the perfect percussive accompaniment, on the fly as it were. Soon, a slight diversion by him draws a similar response from Hossien Alizadeh where he varies and even switches melodies that ride on that rhythmic structure. The back and forth is dynamic and without rehearsal, impossible to replicate in spirit or mood.   This compilation of their work over the last quarter of a century offers an historical and pleasant journey through the moments where such exchanges bring palpitations to the mind, opening unexpected doors onto unexpected and extraordinary tapestries of sounds where melodies are woven into one another, where natural and geometric rhythms move together as well as suggest each other. Every performance weaves an unexpected design that allow the mind to take off into a new and seemingly unlimited space.