Ali Akbar Shahnazi
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Ali Akbar Shahnazi was an Iranian musician and master of the tar
Tar
Tar is modified pitch produced primarily from the wood and roots of pine by destructive distillation under pyrolysis. Production and trade in tar was a major contributor in the economies of Northern Europe and Colonial America. Its main use was in preserving wooden vessels against rot. The largest...

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A very great master of tar
Tar
Tar is modified pitch produced primarily from the wood and roots of pine by destructive distillation under pyrolysis. Production and trade in tar was a major contributor in the economies of Northern Europe and Colonial America. Its main use was in preserving wooden vessels against rot. The largest...

 (Persian six-stringed long-necked lute), Ostad Ali Akbar Shahnazi was born in Tehran, Iran, 1897.

His father, Mirza Hossein Gholi
Mirza Hossein Gholi
Mirza Hosseingholi, also known as Agha Mirza Hosseingholi Farahani, was a musician and tar player. Born in Tehran, he and his older brother Mirza Abdollah started learning music from their father Ali Akbar Farahani who was a well-known musician. He is best known for his radif and for his unique...

, the great master of tar named him Ali Akbar according to a very old tradition: the grandson should be named as his grandfather. His grandfather the Ali Akbar Khan of the Farahan village of the Arak city was a great master of tar. One day after a quarrel with his neighbor he went to the roof to play with his tar named Ghalandar. Tomorrow of that night they found him died in the roof.

He started learning tar from his respected father at the age of 7. After five years he reached at the level that he was able to teach some of his father's students.

At the age of 14 recorded two gramophone disks by playing tar the Persian famous melodies, Avaz-e-Afshari and Avaz-e-Bayat-e-Tork accompanying the great vocalist Jenab Damavandi.

At the age of 18 after the demise of his father he was the responsible of his father's class and started teaching them.

He established the Shahnazi Music School in 1929.

He recorded many pieces with the great vocalists of his time such as Eghbal Azar, Nakisa and so on. Also he has collaborated with other great master of his time such as Reza Mahjubi
Reza Mahjubi
Reza Mahjubi , was a Persian composer and violinist.-Birth and Childhood:Reza Mahjubi was born in 1898 in Tehran, into a musical family. His father, Abbasali Nazer, used to play Ney, and his mother, Fakhrosadat, played piano...

 (violinist) and Hosain Tehrani (father of modern tonbak).

Not only he taught his students his father's radif, but also he composed a very beautiful radif and called it radif-e-dore-ye-ali and taught it to his students too.

He comes from a music family called in Persian Khandan-e-Honar that literally means art dynasty. His younger brother Abdolhossein was a very good tar player also. Their uncle Mirza Abdollah was a very great teacher of setar. Ali Akbar Khan's nephew the Gholam Hossein Khan was another great tar player.

He recorded his radif in 1977. He had recorded his father's radif in 1962.

He died in 1985 at the age of 88.

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