Behrad & Zolani

The Behrad & Zolani name on a santur marks one of the most documented Persian-instrument design partnerships of the modern era: Tehran-trained santur master Kourosh Zolani and Iranian-Canadian inventor Mohssen Behrad. Together they developed the chromatic santur — a mechanical tuning system that lets a player switch between dastgah modes and Western keys mid-performance, a feature unique to their workshop and used in Tapadum’s chromatic santurs.

A Partnership Between Master and Inventor

Zolani trained at the University of Art in Tehran under the foremost 20th-century santur master, Faramarz Payvar, then relocated to Los Angeles in 2002, where he completed UCLA’s film scoring programme. Behrad emigrated to Canada in 1990 and built a career as an orthodontic technician — patenting several mechanical inventions before turning his engineering instincts toward one of his cultural roots: the santur, the trapezoidal Persian hammered dulcimer whose 72 strings, once tuned, hold their setting until the next mode change.

Their question was simple: what if a santur could change modes without retuning every string? The answer is the chromatic santur — built around Behrad’s mechanical mandal system, which raises or lowers a string’s pitch by a half-step at the move of a lever. A player can now access all twelve chromatic pitches and switch between Persian dastgah and Western tonality during a single piece. The partnership operates under the brand santour-7-dastgah.

Performance and Recognition

Zolani is the public-facing musician of the partnership. His album Peaceful Planet won the 2003 Just Plain Folks International Contest’s Best Solo Instrumental Album, and he received the Elaine Weissman L.A. Treasures Award. In 2005 he played santur on David Arkenstone’s Atlantis: A Symphonic Journey, an album nominated for Best New Age Album at the 47th Grammy Awards. His performance schedule has included Washington’s Kennedy Center and the Roman ruins at Jerash, Jordan. Iranian press coverage of the chromatic santur appeared in Iran Newspaper (2001) and Mehr News (2001) — early discussions of an instrument design that has since become the partnership’s signature.

The Master-Apprentice Lineage

Zolani’s santur teacher Faramarz Payvar (1933–2009) was the central figure of 20th-century Persian santur — composer, university lecturer at the National Conservatory of Music in Tehran, and the player credited with raising the instrument to concert-stage repertoire. Among Payvar’s many recorded students, Zolani is one of those who carried the lineage abroad: his chromatic santur work draws on Payvar’s classical foundation while opening the instrument to cross-genre repertoire.

From Tehran Workshop to Tapadum Showroom

While Zolani and Behrad design and oversee the instruments from the diaspora, the chromatic santurs themselves are built in Tehran — where the partnership’s specifications, Behrad’s mandal system, and traditional Persian construction (walnut soundboard, double bridges, full 72-string layout) come together in workshop hands. Each instrument reaches our Brisighella, Italy showroom already calibrated to switch modes on the lever — a player can move from dastgah-e Shur to a Western minor key without breaking the line.