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Our Story is not so much a political statement -- though no story of the Iranian experience is fully told without making one -- as it is an emotional tour de force. It is an album about memories of the homeland and losing friends and all that is familiar, but it is also about finding strength and love in the face of those losses.
Work on Our Story began when Shahrzad joined talents with an old friend and Silhouettt collaborator, Farzin Farhadi. Farzin is a saxophonist and composer, playing both roles -- as well as producer and songwriter -- for this album. He has several of his own instrumental CDs on the American market, including: My World, and In a Faraway Land.
Our Story contains 9 songs--8 originals and 1 remake. Lyrics are written by such writers as Partow Nooriala, Mohammad Ali Sepanlou and Zoya Zakarian, three very well known and well loved artists in the Iranian community. This CD has a fresh sound combining the western jazz and techno sounds and beat with more traditional Iranian melodies.
About the Artist
Strong, independent, proud and assertive. These adjectives are not traditionally used to describe women in the Persian community. But the Iranian experience in America has not only produced such women -- who are strong and independent, who are proud and assertive, women like Shahrzad -- it has also produced a Persian community which embodies those terms as well. Our Story is above all an album of a woman’s emotional journey from Iran to America. It is a journey with which Shahrzad is personally familiar.
Shahrzad Sepanlou was born in Iran to a literary family and came to the United States in 1986. Her father, Mohammad Ali Sepanlou, is a respected poet who lives in Iran, and her mother, Partow Nooriala, is an outspoken literary critic and poet who immigrated along with her daughter. Both have contributed song lyrics to Our Story. Growing up in a literary family no doubt inspired Shahrzad’s own desire for creative expression -- from the singing, dancing, and acting performances she put on for family and friends as a child in Iran, to the choir and theater programs she joined as a high school student in the United States. After graduating from UCLA in 1995 with a bachelor’s degree in sociology, Shahrzad began her professional singing career as one-third of the female trio Silhouettt. She produced one album and toured the United States with Silhouettt, then left the band to pursue a master’s degree at USC and to work on her own solo album. The result of that effort is Our Story.
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