Thu, Nov 12
Sina Bathaie
Most people in this country have never heard a santur played live, and could not tell you what one looks like. It is a hammered dulcimer, Persian, seventy-two strings, played with two small mallets, and the sound it makes is closer to rain on a metal roof than to anything in a Western orchestra. Hearing it for the first time reliably does something to people that they struggle to describe afterward.
What makes this night worth the drive is that it is not a preservation concert. The instrument is run through live electronic production — loops, texture, ambient beds — which is exactly the kind of thing that gets purists annoyed and everyone else transfixed. The Iranian diaspora in Los Angeles is large enough and old enough that a room like this fills with two entirely different crowds who did not expect to be standing next to each other.
That double audience is the reason to go. You will be beside people who grew up with this sound in their parents' house and people who found it through ambient playlists, and both are correct.
Thursday November 12, 7:30 PM, at The Vermont in East Hollywood.
Most people in this country have never heard a santur played live, and could not tell you what one looks like. It is a hammered dulcimer, Persian, seventy-two strings, played with two small mallets, and the sound it makes is closer to rain on a metal roof than to anything in a Western orchestra. Hearing it for the first time reliably does something to people that they struggle to describe afterward.
What makes this night worth the drive is that it is not a preservation concert. The instrument is run through live electronic production — loops, texture, ambient beds — which is exactly the kind of thing that gets purists annoyed and everyone else transfixed. The Iranian diaspora in Los Angeles is large enough and old enough that a room like this fills with two entirely different crowds who did not expect to be standing next to each other.
That double audience is the reason to go. You will be beside people who grew up with this sound in their parents' house and people who found it through ambient playlists, and both are correct.
Thursday November 12, 7:30 PM, at The Vermont in East Hollywood.
What makes this night worth the drive is that it is not a preservation concert. The instrument is run through live electronic production — loops, texture, ambient beds — which is exactly the kind of thing that gets purists annoyed and everyone else transfixed. The Iranian diaspora in Los Angeles is large enough and old enough that a room like this fills with two entirely different crowds who did not expect to be standing next to each other.
That double audience is the reason to go. You will be beside people who grew up with this sound in their parents' house and people who found it through ambient playlists, and both are correct.
Thursday November 12, 7:30 PM, at The Vermont in East Hollywood.
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Sina Bathaie
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Thursday, November 12, 2026
7:30 PM PST – 10:00 PM PST
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Most people in this country have never heard a santur played live, and could not tell you what one looks like. It is a hammered dulcimer, Persian, seventy-two strings, played with two small mallets, and the sound it makes is closer to rain on a metal roof than to anything in a Western orchestra. Hearing it for the first time reliably does something to people that they struggle to describe afterward.
What makes this night worth the drive is that it is not a preservation concert. The instrument is run through live electronic production — loops, texture, ambient beds — which is exactly the kind of thing that gets purists annoyed and everyone else transfixed. The Iranian diaspora in Los Angeles is large enough and old enough that a room like this fills with two entirely different crowds who did not expect to be standing next to each other.
That double audience is the reason to go. You will be beside people who grew up with this sound in their parents' house and people who found it through ambient playlists, and both are correct.
Thursday November 12, 7:30 PM, at The Vermont in East Hollywood.
What makes this night worth the drive is that it is not a preservation concert. The instrument is run through live electronic production — loops, texture, ambient beds — which is exactly the kind of thing that gets purists annoyed and everyone else transfixed. The Iranian diaspora in Los Angeles is large enough and old enough that a room like this fills with two entirely different crowds who did not expect to be standing next to each other.
That double audience is the reason to go. You will be beside people who grew up with this sound in their parents' house and people who found it through ambient playlists, and both are correct.
Thursday November 12, 7:30 PM, at The Vermont in East Hollywood.
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