Praised by the London Evening Standard as a “huge talent” and by Gulf News as a “world-class musician who excels at blending the best of Western and Middle-Eastern compositions,” pianist Tara Kamangar’s repertoire ranges from Bach and Beethoven to rarely heard works by Iranian composers of the past century. She has premiered numerous piano works in renowned venues across the United States and Europe, including the U.S. premiere of Aminollah Hossein’s Concerto No. 2 to a capacity audience of over 3,000 at Oakland’s Paramount Theatre and the world premiere of Naji Hakim’s Esquisses Persanes pour Piano (Edition Schott) at the Shepherd School of Music. Other orchestral engagements have included Saint-Saëns’ Second Piano Concerto with conductor Loris Tjeknavorian and Beethoven’s Triple Concerto and Rachmaninoff’s Paganini Rhapsody with conductor Michael Morgan. An avid composer with a background in ethnomusicology, Tara wrote the original score for the prizewinning documentary “Fifi Howls from Happiness” (France/Iran), called one of the best films of 2013 by Le Monde, and has incorporated Kurdish folk music into her classical compositions.
 
Tara’s Delos release “East of Melancholy,” recorded at Skywalker Sound by producer and Grammy® winning engineer Leslie Ann Jones, juxtaposes works by Russian composers influenced by folk music from the Caucasus, with rarely performed pieces by Iranian, Armenian, and Tajik composers born in twentieth-century Iran. There has been a considerable interchange of musical inspiration in this region, given that much of the Caucasus was under Persian rule until as recently as the mid-nineteenth century. An honors graduate of Harvard University and London’s Royal Academy of Music, Tara resides in New York City.
 

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