Kiya Tabassian leads the group and plays the Persian setar, the predecessor of the Indian sitar. He’ll be joined by Senegalese griot and kora player Ablaye Cissoko and percussionist Patrick Graham.

At the same time, I was exposed to traditional Persian folk music and my dad came back from Iran with a Persian setar – the first Persian instrument I learned to play.” ...

The Persian Arts Society continued its quest to showcase the traditional and contemporary arts of Iran with "an evening of ecstatic music and dance" on Saturday at the Wilshire-Ebell Theatre.

Sahba Motallebi was born in 1978 in Tehran, Iran, and started playing traditional Persian music at an early age. She is a graduate of Tehran Conservatory and has studied tar and setar under master ...

Students sang classical Persian tunes or played Persian instruments, such as the tombak, a type of percussion instrument, and the setar, a guitar-like instrument, before the ensemble disbanded in ...

Even the instrument Hafez Nazeri performs on is a traditional Persian instrument he's improvised by adding two strings to increase the Persian setar's range.

He speaks from real on-the-ground experience too, having travelled to Iran and experiencing pivotal musical moments in his life, learning Persian setar from a teacher there.