musiconline blog

news about us & everything about music on our blog!

Who is Farid Farjad?

who-is-farid-farjad
23 July 2020

Farid Farjad is a name that music fans have always heard of. Fans describe Farjad, the Iranian violin virtuoso, as ‘able to make us sad even in our happiest moments’. As musiconline, we share with you the success story of Farid Farjad, the world-famous violin virtuoso who has performed many concerts in today’s blog post.

 

A Persian-born musician who started playing the violin at the age of 8, he was born in 1938 in Tehran. In 1966, Farjad received a master's degree in classical music at the Tehran Conservatory of Music and undertook important duties with the Tehran Symphony Orchestra. The violinist, who has a background in Persian Folk Music, has also worked on Classical Western Music and played an important role in the development of Persian Music.

Born and raised during the Pahlavi dynasty, the violinist was forced to leave his country and settle in the United States due to the 1979 revolution in Iran, and has been naturalized as a U.S. citizen since this year and continues to live in the United States. But he calls himself an Iranian, not an American. Farjad and many Persian musicians were banned from entering the country after music was declared ‘haram’ and banned in Iran after the revolution. The artist has lived in Los Angeles for years.

In an interview, stating that his exile from his country changed the world of feelings rather than his influence on the development of his music, he said;

“I was one of the prominent violinists in my country before I left Iran. I was a violin virtuoso of the Iranian Symphony Orchestra. I had completed my training and was making sure progress in this area. After my exile, there was no tangible change in what I learned or did. Being out of my country has just changed my feelings, my inner world, my feelings. I was very fond of Western music in Iran of that period, which was on its way to becoming Modern. When I was in Iran, I was more interested in the music and pieces of Mozart, Tchaikovsky, Beethoven. But after I was exiled, I started to work mostly on Iranian music.”

Stating that his source of inspiration is the music he grew up listening to in Iran, Farjad adds that he has listened to all the world music before, but now he only returns to his own albums and listens to them, trying to find the missing and mistakes in his old tracks and try to make better music based on them.

Farjad's five-series ‘Anroozha’ (Those Days) album, consisting of the only piano accompaniment, describes the days when he was not allowed to enter his country, his life there, and his longing for his country. In the first four of the series, Farjad was accompanied by Abdi Yamini and on the fifth album by his wife Mitra Tavakkoli on piano.

Two albums by the collective called 'Golha Orchestra' are also among the artist's works. In these albums, Farjad, in his own words, poured the sadness of nature into the notes.

With millions of fans around the world, we have selected some of Farjad's most beautiful works for you:

Fikrimin İnce Gülü

Robabeh Jan

Golha

Sarı Gelin

Ahange Azari

In this week's blog post on musiconline, we shared the story of Farid Farjad, the 82-year-old violin virtuoso . If you like our post you can share via the buttons below, if you want to be aware of our new blog posts, you can subscribe to our e-mail newsletter here.

And if you say, ‘I want to play the violin too,' you can try our violin lessons online for free. ?

Stay with music.

Knowledge increases as it is shared!