Jeff Cohen & Cameron Shahbazi

Countertenor Cameron Shahbazi and pianist Jeff Cohen present a recital that invites reflection on memory, identity, and the feeling of belonging. Born in Canada into a family of Iranian heritage, Shahbazi conceives this programme as a sequence of pages from a personal diary, in which music from the past acquires new meanings. The journey begins with works by Monteverdi, Purcell, Handel, and Philip Glass, composers who enter into dialogue here with contemporary arrangements of popular songs that form part of our collective memory. Gradually, however, the programme turns towards the East, exploring the fascination that the Persian world has inspired within Western culture. It is no coincidence that Handel’s Siroe, re di Persia appears in the programme, an example of European interest in an often idealised vision of the Orient. The second half of the recital leads us directly to the heart of Iranian culture through the songs of Googoosh and Hayedeh, legendary voices shaped, like so many Iranian artists, by the consequences of the 1979 revolution, censorship, and exile.