Matt Hannafin - Persian tombak (zarb), Kurdish daff, bendir, dohol, darbukka, riq, miscellaneous frame drums and tambourines, miscellaneous shakers and rattles, etc. For improv/New Music performances, generally a percussion kit made up of bass drums, toms, bongos, snare, gongs, cymbals, triangles, shakers, woodblocks, bells, and found percussion.
Influences
Matt Hannafin works in the fields of improvised New Music (free improvisation) and Persian classical and folk music. His influences as a percussionist include Hossein Teherani, Djamchid Chemirani, Z'ev, Robyn Shulkowsky, Korean percussion group Samulnori, F.M. Einheit / Einsturzende Neubauten, Matthias Kaul, Eddie Prevost (AMM), Le Quan Ninh, Madjid Khaladj, Tony Oxley, Sean Meehan, William Hooker, and Nana Vasconcelos -- plus his teachers: Kavous Shirzadian, Jamey Haddad, Glen Velez, Layne Redmond, John Amira, and Magette Fall. The works of composers La Monte Young, George Crumb, Alvin Lucier, and John Cage have also figured enormously in his overall approach to sound, as have the various percussive traditions of Iran, Korea, Japan, and Tibet and the work of visual artists Richard Serra, Richard Long, Walter De Maria, Dan Flavin, Marian Zazeela, and Andy Goldsworthy.
Sounds Like
Crickets, cicadas, frogs, blowing leaves, tide over seashells, construction, waterfalls, fountains and geysers, glaciers and seiche tones, bamboo, chain-link fences, stones and masonry, miscellaneous engines and generators, iron and brass, gagaku and pungmul, the creaking of ships' lines, highway overpasses, elevated trains, wind on mountain lakes, boats against piers, fire and crumpled newspaper, bricks poured from dump trucks, men with sacks of cans, men at a forge, Man with a Movie Camera, humpback whales, power tools, blizzards and hurricanes, hardware stores, foghorns, sirens, soil, and silence.
Matt Hannafin works in the fields of Persian classical and folk music as well as improvised New Music (free improvisation), often in collaboration with electronic and avant-classical musicians.
Matt Hannafin is a New York-born, Portland-based percussionist active in both free improvisation and Iranian classical and traditional music. He studied Iranian tombak (classical goblet drum) with master Kavous Shirzadian; Arabic and Indian percussion with Jamey Haddad, Glen Velez, and Layne Redmond; African and Afro-Caribbean percussion with John Amira and Magette Fall; and voice with composer La Monte Young and Pandit Pran Nath. For improvisation, his approach blends the techniques and timbres of eastern and western percussion with sonorities and ideas borrowed from nature, electronic music, and the urban-industrial soundscape.
Mr. Hannafin is a member of the improvisation/sound-sculpture duo
Shunyata with New York electronics player Brian Moran and the improv trio Chainworks and recording project Chain Home Low with Moran and pianist Dan DeChellis. He's also performed with a wide range of collaborators in both traditional and avant settings, including shakuhachi player Jeffrey Lependorf, legendary Sun Ra altoist Marshall Allen, Borbetomagus guitarist Donald Miller, Persian santur maestro Hossein Salehi, trumpeter Nate Wooley, electronics players Wade Matthews and Doug Theriault, Ukrainian bandura virtuoso Julian Kytasty, butoh dancers Vanessa Skantze and Alex Haverfield (Death Posture), zen kado flower arranger Cynthia Spencer, balloonist Ricardo Arias, turntablist Maria Chavez, percussionists Hearn Gadbois and Tatsuya Nakatani, and sax players Stephan Rives, Blaise Siwula, and Katsura Yamauchi. In the 1980s he was a regular guest with NY/NJ dada-noise legends Children in Adult Jails and performed as half of the improv/industrial duo Alexis at Spala. In 1993-94 he was the first male drummer in Layne Redmond's previously all-female percussion ensemble Mob of Angels, and from 1995 to 2002 he was percussionist for the traditional Sufi ensemble Soroosh, featuring Turkish multi-instrumentalist Omar Faruk Tekbilek. On Labor Day 2004, during the Republican convention in occupied New York, he accompanied the Church of Stop Shopping's Reverend Billy and the choir of St. Marks in a musical setting of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. In 2005 his composition "Zourkhaneh 244" was featured in Majeed Beenteha's film Cirque de Nuit and in 2005-2006 he was principal percussionist for the Sephardic music and theater group Adelantre, led by flautist/vocalist Katie Down. Recently, he's begun performing as guest percussionist with the Portland-based Persian music ensemble Shabava, led by multi-instrumentalist Bobak Salehi and oud player Nat Hulskamp. He's taught Persian classical and traditional percussion privately since 1999. In addition to his musical activities, Mr. Hannafin is a professional writer who's authored several books and hundreds of articles for magazines, newspapers, and the web.
Matt Hannafin has performed at the United Nations General Assembly Hall and the Iranian Mission to the UN (NY); the Miami Iranian Cultural Festival (FL); the Olympia World Sacred Music Festival (WA); The Ko Festival (Amherst, MA); the Salem World Beat Festival (OR); the New England Conservatory and the Zeitgeist Gallery (Boston/Cambridge, MA); the Red Room (Baltimore, MD); Princeton University (NJ); and New York venues Symphony Space, the Brooklyn Museum, the Society for Ethical Culture, Tonic, the Knitting Factory, the Issue Project Room, St. Marks Church, Dance New Amsterdam, Makor, Washington Square Church, Roulette, ABC No Rio, CBGBs, the Bowery Poetry Club, Columbia University, the PanMedia Festival, and the audio/video series {R}ake. He's also performed for the World Music Institute, New York University's Near Eastern Studies Department, Portland's Creative Music Guild, and numerous Persian cultural and arts groups in New York and Oregon. His recordings include two solos, a disk of environmental musique concrete, and collaborations with Brian Moran, Chainworks, Ernesto Diaz-Infante, Donald Miller and Blaise Siwula, and husband-and-wife improv team Ed Chang and Motoko Shimizu. A number of these disks are available on the $5 DIY-CDR series Sachimay Interventions, of which Mr. Hannafin is the administrator.
HEY!! Who would've thought after all these years we'd be doing a project together. Was great to see you on your trip. Hope all is well. Get back to NM soon.
Hi Matt... you are very welcome... u got a really briliant, reffined and inspired playing to my mind... I'll come back soon to listen more... All the best... Yann
Last time I dropped by didn't you have Obama in your favorites? Now it is Edwards. Can we track how your vote changes as election year approaches on myspace, then? ;)--Laylage
Matt Hannafin I had a party and we ate Hoppin' John, biscuits, collards, and played elvis. last time i listened to elvis was in a zip car driving from MA with you at the wheel. hello hello. --Laylage
