Shahram Nazeri is a contemporary Iranian Kurdish tenor from Kermanshah who sings classical music. He has been accompanied by some of the masters of Iranian traditional music such as Jalil Shahnaz, Hossein Alizadeh, Jalal Zolfonoun, Parviz Meshkatian and Faramarz Payvar. He has also worked with his son Hafez Nazeri, a composer. Born in a Kurdish family, he was the first musician to include Rumi's poetry within Persian music, thus establishing a tradition of Sufi music within both Persian classical music and Kurdish music.The Christian Science Monitor has called him "Iran's Pavarotti". Most recently he was awarded with Chevalier des Arts et Lettres medal from the government of France for his lifetime achievements in Iranian traditional music. Also Asia Society has awarded him by Lifetime Cultural Heritage Award. Shahram Nazeri has been established as a significant artist in Iran since the 1970s. His first albums which were in the form of mutual albums with Mohammad-Reza Shajarian, were published by the Chavoush institute by the end of the late the 1970s. The content of these albums were filled with liberalism and patriotic ideas. Nazeri has released over forty recordings to date. His 1980s album The One Hundred-Petalled Rose has held the record for the highest selling album of Persian classical music and Sufi music in history. His musical talents were first nurtured by his mother at a very young age. Throughout his childhood, he was under the tutelage of the most renowned masters of Persian music including Abdollah Davami, Nourali Boroumand, and Mahmood Karimi. At eleven, he performed on the national Iranian television live for the first time. By age 29, he had gained a loyal fan base. He has continued to perform in Iran and abroad over the course of the last two decades. He has performed at major venues worldwide, including The festival of Avignon, Theâtre de la Ville in Paris, The Tokyo Summer festival, The Kodak Theatre in Los Angeles, and the Royal Albert Hall, the Festa del Popolo in Italy, The Beiteddine Festival in Lebanon, the Kölner Philharmonic in Germany, Asia Society, World Music Instituted and Brooklyn Academy of Music BAM in New York, the Roma Europa Festival in Rome, São Paulo Music Festival in Brazil and Fes Festival of World Sacred Music in Morocco and many others. From early on, Nazeri began to sing and compose music to the works of Mawlana Jalal ad-Din Rumi, Iran's most cherished Sufi poet. Nazeri was also pioneering in assimilating contemporary Persian poetry into the classical repertoire. His progressive approach to music has led to collaborative new projects with his son, composer and singer Hafez Nazeri. In year 2000 they performed Hafez's new composition in Iran which has held the record for the most highly attended concert 140.000 in entire Middle East. In 2005/06 Nazeri along with his son's new Rumi ensemble launched "In the Path of Rumi," a highly successful North American tour which performed record-breaking sold-out concerts, to rave reviews. The venues, included Los Angeles' Kodak theater, – the most highly attended Persian classical music concert outside of Iran.
