Hossein Omoumi | id

Hossein 'Omoumi was born in Isfahãn, Iran, and began his musical education singing with his father. At the age of fourteen he began to study the ney, the traditional reed flute of Iran. In 1962, Omoumi entered the National University of Iran to study architecture, but also played the ney in musical competitions, later entering the National Conservatory of Music in Tehran.

His performance career has included appearances at many of the major festivals and concert halls in Europe and the United States, including San Francisco’s World Music Festival, UCLA’s Schoenberg Hall, and Wadsworth Theater the Getty Center, in Los Angeles, the World Music Institute and Asia Society in New York, and Theatre de la Ville in Paris.

Omoumi is a noted scholar and teacher of Persian music, having served on the National Conservatory and Tehran University in Tehran, Centre for Oriental Music Studies of Sorbonne University in Paris, UCLA, and the Ethnomusicology department of the University of Washington in Seattle. He is now Maseeh Professor in Persian Performing Arts of music at the University of California, Irvine, UCI. He is also an architect, having received his doctorate from the University of Florence, Italy.

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