Elshan Ghasimi: Reinterpretation of the Radīf | Dastgāh-e Chahārgāh

A World Premiere: With Dastgāh-e Chahārgāh, Elshan Ghasimi continues her systematic reinterpretation of the Radīf – six concerts at the TA T.

In autumn 2026, composer and tar virtuoso Elshan Ghasimi continues her multi-year project The Reinterpretation of the Radīf with Dastgāh-e Chahārgāh. At its centre is the Radīf as a whole – the orally transmitted canon that carries Persian music’s memory and heritage. Ghasimi is the first woman to undertake a systematic reinterpretation of all twelve modular systems that make up the Radīf – seven dastgāhs and five āvāz – treating each in its entirety as the basis for a distinct contemporary work. Through the cycle, she opens up a dimension of classical Persian music that remains largely unknown in Europe. Dastgāh-e Chahārgāh will receive its world premiere at TA T on 9 October, followed by five further concerts through 5 December.

The first chapter, Dastgāh-e Shur, premiered on 10 November 2022 in the basilica of the Bode Museum, in cooperation with the Museum für Islamische Kunst (Museum of Islamic Art). Since then, Ghasimi has presented her work on the Radīf throughout Europe, including at WOMEX 2023 in A Coruña. Trained at the Tehran Conservatory of Music, she became familiar with different Radīf traditions in Tehran and Azerbaijan. She moved to Germany in 2016. As a woman in Iran, she had been unable to perform publicly as a soloist. Only in Germany did she find the artistic freedom and institutional conditions that enabled her to develop this long-term project.

Following the mass killings in Iran in January 2026 and the subsequent war, the transmission of this cultural memory has taken on renewed urgency. As a cultural ambassador for Persian music, Ghasimi offers a more complex and nuanced view of Iran – one rooted in cultural traditions stretching back millennia and extending far beyond the regime, repression and war to which the country is often reduced.

Concert dates

Ticket Reservation via Eventbrite (free admission!)

Friday, October 9 — 7 p.m.
WORLD PREMIERE

Saturday, October 10 — 4 p.m.
Followed by the conversation with Mahmoud Hosseini Zad (see below “Conversations”)

Friday, October 30 — 7 p.m.

Saturday, October 31 — 4 p.m.
Followed by the conversation with Mona Mirkamali

Friday, December 4 — 7 p.m.

Saturday, December 5 — 4 p.m.
Followed by the conversation with Nahid Siamdoust

Concert duration: Approximately 1 hour.

The Radīf

The Radīf – literally ‘row’ or ‘order’ – comprises more than 300 melodic models known as gushehs, organized into twelve modular systems, the dastgāhs āvāz. It is neither a composition nor a fixed score, but a musical grammar transmitted orally and internalised through listening, playing and remembering. In every performance, memory, interpretation, composition and improvisation come together anew. Since 2009, the Radīf has been inscribed on UNESCO’s Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.

Ghasimi draws on different versions of the Radīf, especially the canonical tradition of Mīrzā Abdollāh. Unlike a traditional Radīf performance, she does not follow a single version; instead, she brings several into dialogue. All the gushehs in the system she is working on remain points of departure for her work. She does not simply add new melodies to the Radīf. Through the interplay of composition and improvisation, she reshapes transitions, temporal relationships and internal tensions. In this way, she makes the Radīf’s inner order audible while setting it in motion.

The second chapter is devoted to Dastgāh-e Chahārgāh. Its musical identity derives not from a particular pitch collection alone, but from microtonal nuances, central reference tones and characteristic melodic movements. After Shur, Chahārgāh marks a deliberate deepening of the project, centred on close listening to recurrence, transition and transformation.

Elshan Ghasimi and the TA T

In the early neoclassical architecture of the Tieranatomisches Theater, the work finds a resonant setting of its own. The building, designed by Carl Gotthard Langhans, is itself an act of reinterpretation: it combines ancient models of the circular temple and amphitheatre in a new architecture for knowledge. In their different ways, both the building and the work bring inherited forms of order into the present. Built as a theatre for teaching, its architecture organises bodies and distributes attention: who speaks, who listens, and from where.

In 2026, TA T’s curatorial programme focuses on listening within this architecture and on heritage as a living practice, continually recreated by the communities who engage with it. Ghasimi’s reinterpretation of the Radīf enters into dialogue with these concerns, bringing another practice of listening, transmission and reinterpretation into the historic lecture hall.

TA T first presented Elshan Ghasimi’s work at the 2025 Tag des offenen Denkmals, curated by Lilli Maxine Ebert. The collaboration continues in 2026 with Dastgāh-e Chahārgāh.

Biographies

ELSHAN GHASIMI

“In her playing […] every phrase is invested with deep thought and grave authority.”
Michael Church, Musics Lost and Found

Elshan Ghasimi (born in Isfahan, Iran, in 1981) is a virtuoso performer on the Persian instruments tar, setar, robab and dayere, and an expert in Persian art music. She is a versatile artist and composer, an innovative performer and a dedicated educator. Her work explores the intersections between tradition and modernity, East and West, and music and other artistic disciplines.
Having devoted many years to mastering the Radīf – the repertoire at the heart of Persian musical heritage – Ghasimi is now developing a contemporary artistic reinterpretation of it. Her professional career began at the age of seventeen, when she became the youngest member of Iran’s National Orchestra. Since moving to Germany in 2016, she has continued her work as a soloist and composer and has collaborated with renowned ensembles such as Concerto Köln. Her work brings Persian musical heritage into dialogue with a wide range of genres, including contemporary classical music, jazz, experimental music and early music.

GUEST SPEAKERS

Mahmoud Hosseini Zad (b. 1946 in Firuzkuh, Iran) is a writer and translator of contemporary German-language literature into Persian. His translations include works by Bertolt Brecht, Friedrich Dürrenmatt, Judith Hermann, Ingo Schulze, Uwe Timm and Peter Stamm. He was awarded the Goethe Medal in 2013.

Mona Mirkamali is a musicologist and Radīf expert. Her research examines the oral transmission of musical knowledge and the effects of mediatisation and standardisation on Persian music.

Nahid Siamdoust is a scholar of media and Middle Eastern studies at the University of Texas at Austin and a 2026 Humboldt Fellow in Berlin. She is the author of Soundtrack of the Revolution: The Politics of Music in Iran. Her research focuses on Iranian music, media, the public sphere and politics.

CURATOR

Julian Malte Hatem Schindele is an artist, curator, art historian and founder of Bublitz. His work centres on long-term artistic collaborations, cultures of remembrance and connections between different forms of art and knowledge. He curates The Reinterpretation of the Radīf.

Credits

A collaboration between Bublitz and TA T

Bublitz:

Curator: Julian Malte Hatem Schindele (Bublitz)
Graphic design: Masoud Morgan

Bublitz is a curatorial platform founded in 2011 for exhibitions, publications, music projects and discussion programmes. Its work centres on long-term collaborations with artists and connections between different art forms and fields of knowledge. Bublitz has accompanied Elshan Ghasimi’s work since 2016.

TA T:

Head Curator: Felix Sattler
Curator for Public Programmes & Outreach: Paz Ponce
Project Management: Antonia Willisch
Production: Fanny Welz
Communication: Frederike Jaedicke-Nolte

Funders, partners and participating institutions

Temporal Communities; Goethe-Institut; Ethnologisches Museum and Museum für Asiatische Kunst – Staatliche Museen zu Berlin; Freie Universität Berlin; Katholische Akademie in Berlin e. V.

Funded by Senatsverwaltung für Kultur und Gesellschaftlichen Zusammenhalt

The participation of Mona Mirkamali is supported by: Zentrum für Kulturtechnik (ZfK), Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin

Easy Read Version

Elshan Ghasimi: Reinterpretation of the Radīf

Music from Iran at TA T

Elshan Ghasimi is a composer and musician.

She plays the tar.
The tar is a traditional Persian string instrument.

At TA T, she presents six concerts.

The concerts are part of her long-term project The Reinterpretation of the Radīf.

What is the Radīf?

The Radīf is an important part of Persian music.

It contains more than 300 melodies.

The Radīf is not a fixed piece of music.

Musicians learn it by listening, playing, and remembering.

They can then interpret and change the music when they play.

The Radīf has been part of the UNESCO list of Intangible Cultural Heritage since 2009.

Elshan Ghasimi’s project

Elshan Ghasimi is creating new music based on the Radīf.

She works with all twelve musical systems of the Radīf.

Each system becomes the basis for a new work.

She works with different versions of the Radīf.

She brings these versions together.

She combines composition and improvisation.

This creates new ways of hearing the traditional music.

In 2026, she presents the second part of the project:

Dastgāh-e Chahārgāh

Elshan Ghasimi and TA T

The concerts take place in the historic lecture hall of TA T.

The concerts bring a different tradition of listening into this historic space.

Conversations

Three concerts are followed by conversations.

The conversations are about music, culture, and life in Iran.

10 October
To Translate Is to Remember
Writer and translator Mahmoud Hosseini Zad talks about literature and translation between Iran and Germany.

31 October
Mona Mirkamali
Musicologist Mona Mirkamali talks about how musical knowledge is passed on and changed.

5 December
Nahid Siamdoust
Scholar Nahid Siamdoust talks about music, popular culture, and public life in Iran.

The conversations are for everyone.

You do not need to know anything about Persian music before coming.

The conversations take place after the concerts, with a short break in between.