Hamdel Music Ensemble & Mohammad Motamedi

	Seyed Ali Jaberi
	November 8, 2025
	8:00 pm
	Leiden, Nederland
	De X

Tonight we have a very special concert in De X, an ensemble with some big names in Iranian music. Led by tanbour maestro and composer Seyed Ali Jaberi, the Hamdel Ensemble brings an enchanting musical journey that is deeply rooted in Persian Sufi and traditional music. The members of the ensemble are not only virtuoso musicians, but also connoisseurs of the Sufi tradition.

For this concert, they collaborate with Mohammad Motamedi, one of the great Iranian vocalists, who received his training from master Mohammad-Reza Lotfi. Together they tell a spiritual story based on verses from Rumi’s masterpiece Masnavi-Manavi. A masnavi, a work of couplets, is a poetic genre in Persian and Arabic. They are usually long, didactic Sufi works in continuous verses in one meter.

Rumi’s Masnavi is the longest and most famous in this genre, with more than 25,000 verses divided into six movements. It is popularly seen as a storybook, but in fact they are springboards to long passages from Rumi’s mystical teachings. The main theme is the human journey to union with God, the source of all existence. The price for this union is the sacrifice of the selfish self.

Mohammad Motamedi has been singing and training since his childhood and learned from great masters such as the late Hossein Omoumi and Aliasghar Shahzeidi. He has collaborated with the great maestros of Iranian music such as Alexander Rahbari, Mohammad Reza Lotfi, and Hossein Alizadeh, among others, and has performed in venues such as Carnegie Hall, Theatre de la Ville and the Muziekgebouw in Amsterdam. He has been able to create his own original singing style, which is why he is now considered one of the most characteristic and best singers in the genre
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Seyed Ali Jaberi is an award-winning master, whose albums continue to be hugely popular among lovers of traditional Persian and Sufi music. Mohammad Jaberi has been playing the daf and many other forms of percussion for 30 years. He learned to play the daf from masters Khalife Karim Safvati and Ahmad Khak Tinat. His specific style of play follows that of master Bijan Kamkar. Pouriya Jaberi began his musical education when he was eight years old. He took first place at the Fajr International Music Festival in 2002 and 2005 when he was only 15 years old. He also won first prize at the percussion festival in Western Iran in 2008. He currently lives in the Netherlands.

Mitra Zolfi is a cellist and gheychak player. She works with the Khorshid National Instruments Orchestra conducted by Majid Derakhshani and the Iran Shahr National Orchestra, among others. She lives in Iran, teaches Persian classical music and plays with various international ensembles.

Line-up:
Mohammad Motamedi – vocals
Seyed Ali Jaberi – tanbour (kind of lute) and composition
Mohammad Jaberi – daf (frame drum)
Pouriya Jaberi – tanbour and percussion
Mitra Zolfi – gheychak (kind of fiddle)