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. Recently, he's also begun exploring electronic music, mixing live percussion with samples of his acoustic instruments.
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; butoh dancers Death Posture (Vanessa Skantze and Alex Haverfield) and Yuko Ota; electronics players Doug Theriault, Tom Hamilton, Wade Matthews, and Abusive/Consumer; Ukrainian bandura virtuoso Julian Kytasty; 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 Portland Iranian Festival (OR); the PanMedia Festival (NY); 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, 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.
