Yusef Komunyakaa featuring Hafez Modirzadeh, saxophone
Yusef Komunyakaa
Yusef Komunyakaa has also won the William Faulkner Prize from Universite Rennes, Thomas Forcade Award, Hanes Poetry Prize Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award and Louisiana Poetry Award. His subject matter ranges from the African American experience through rural Southern life before Civil Rights and his experience as a soldier in the Vietnam War. A Louisiana native, Komunyakaa has won fellowships from the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Louisiana Arts Council and National Endowment for the Arts.
Hafez Modirzadeh
Saxophonist Hafez Modirzadeh is a Music professor, senior Fulbright scholar and National Endowment for the Arts jazz fellow. From Beijing to Tehran, London to Granada, he has performed and published on a cross-cultural musical approach he calls “chromodal,” developed from American jazz and Iranian dastgah heritages. This concept has been featured over two decades on critically acclaimed releases such as Post-Chromodal Out!, Radif/Suite with Amir ElSaffar, Dandelion and Bemsha Alegria. His music has been described as a “radical cultural exchange” (The New York Times) that is “inclusive and compelling” (Downbeat), “achieving rare emotional impact” (All About Jazz) and “worthy of any accolades or praise one can muster in the creative improvised music world” (All Music Guide). Modirzadeh’s paths have crossed with masters from world traditions, including Ornette Coleman, Mahmoud Zoufonoun and his generation of Asian American musical artists.