Alireza Ashrafpour aka “The Ash” is a professional electric/fretless (Microtonal) guitar player, composer, singer, guitar instructor and folklore music researcher based in Iran. He began to play the guitar in 01/01/2000 (about the age of 20) playing pop-rock songs, but soon he switched to play electric guitar and wrote his first songs with English lyrics in 2002. Learning how to combine Iranian traditional and Folk music and starting to know about jazz music, helped him write his first fusion album Golku (based on traditional and contemporary poetry in Persian language) in 2005-06 (published in 2015-Barbad records)*.

He wrote two more albums in 2011(Singles) and 2014 (Ghasedak), and a few singles, based on Persian poetry through these years which most of them were never published properly (some of them has been published in past coupleofyears).

He formed the band Omnium with his fellow guitarist Kaveh Sajjadi and they released the band’s first album (Down on earth) (written and recorded in 2015-16 and Released in 2018-wiznomusic).

Joining Haman band and releasing a couple of band’s singles and a few shows happened between 2016 to 2019.

Forming Hengam Ensemble in summer 2015 with Amirhosein Alahdadi (Govara Ahmadi and Amin Sadeghian joined during the rehearsals) and some successful shows in Karaj and Tehran in 2017 led the band to their first (live-recorded) album (New Epoch)** published in September 2018 (Javan records).

In 2018 he moved to Turkey and after a few shows in Istanbul and Antalya he planned to return to his homeland to form his own Trio. In mid-2019 he started “The Ash Trio”(which is a quartet now!!) to play live for the first time since his return from Turkey. His bands multiple shows led them to play in Fajr Festival-Tehran and they were about to expand the shows across the whole country and abroad as their next step, but the pandemic happened. So he recorded some of his instrumental compositions with his Quartet and in late 2020, he released “Mania“*** (Mehregan Records).

In 2021 he developed a microtonal guitar called; ‘Cham Sia’. Writing music for this instrument was his new challenge and these songs will start to released in 2023.

Composing multiple albums based on Iranian modes (folk or traditional) and ancient rhythms (called “Circles”) using the fretless and his self-designed microtonal guitar; (better known as “Cham-Sia”), through his personal way of using harmony for persian microtonal and folk music (might be published as a book which he is working on), releasing some of his compositions, releasing a few singles to play them all LIVE! (Festivals in 3 continants is amongst his live shows to come), publishing the translation of Kenny Werner’s “Effortless Mastery book”, writing a guitar method (based on his harmonic and rhythmic approach on Iranian Traditional music for guitar players) and producing and playing electric guitar on a few singles and albums for some talented musicians are amongst his ongoing projects in 2023.