“These days may provide a good opportunity for artistic growth but perhaps the resulting artwork will not be professional productions, because everything has stopped and who knows when it will return,” Aquino told the Tehran Times in a recent interview. “These days of home quarantine I’m studying a lot. I am studying music techniques but […]

Directed and written by Behzad Nalbandi, ‘The Unseen’ is about a time when Tehran hosts foreign dignitaries, the local authorities clean up Tehran’s urban image through an ‘urban beautification’ process which includes the rounding up of unsavory characters from the city streets; i.e. drug addicts and prostitutes. The men are released after a few days […]

‘Feng Shui Upside Down’ is a 15-minute film about a mother’s parenting style that leads to contradictory results. ‘Bullets of Baptism’ is a 12-minute film about the encounter of a human being with himself, which depicts the experimental narrative of this human being in various situations in the film. The film has no dialogue and is […]

‘El Sueno’ from the musician’s ‘Sounds and Bridges’ album has been picked a winner by the 2019 Akademia Music Awards. The track, composed by Ehsan Matouri, was picked out of 1500 other competing submissions in the same genre. It was recognized as the best world musical piece in all categories, including composition, arrangement, and vocals. […]

Zarif was born in 1938 in Tehran. He was a graduate of the Persian National Music Conservatory in Tehran; where he studied tar with Mousa Maroufi. Zarif worked with the Fine Arts Administration Orchestra, conducted by Hoessein Dehlavi in the 1950s and was the professor of tar at the National Conservatory for several years; Hossein Alizadeh was […]

The festival will conclude, awarding the winners in different sections and honoring maestros tar virtuoso Houshang Zarif, pianist Ofelia Parto, Ashiq Hassan Eskandari and composer and conductor Nader Mashayekhi. As Iran’s most prominent music event, Fajr Music Festival is annually held in winter in different sections, wherein many renowned national and international musicians perform in […]

“I think the Iranian youth can make the best use of their thoughts because they have the ability of bricolage,” Mashayekhi told the Tehran Times in an interview on Sunday. “I ask the Iranian youth to get up in the morning, do not talk for half an hour then listen to music for the next […]

Algerian singer Idir, an icon of Berber and Kabyle culture, has died aged 70. The artist, whose real name is Hamid Cheriet, was taken to hospital in Paris on Friday but died the following evening with lung disease. His children confirmed the death with a brief statement on his Facebook page, which said: “We regret […]

The EU’s anthem Ode to Joy has exploded onto the UK’s download chart, making one small symbolic victory for Remainers as the country officially exits the bloc. As well as being the most downloaded song of the week, it has also made an entrance at number 30 in the official singles chart. The result on […]