Mahsa Vahdat - Traces of an Old Vineyard (2015)

The record was released by Kirkelig Kulturverksted (KKV) in January. ”Songlines” is a leading, British publication within the genre ”world music”. The news will be fully presented in the December edition of the magazine.
The album contains Mahsa’s own melodies to poems by the classical Persian poets Khayyam, Hafez and Rumi. Tord Gustavsen is her arranger and pianist, and the other musicians accompanying her are Shervin Mohajer (kamancheh) and Ali Rahimi (percussion). The poems on the record express a big variety of the many aspects of life and love: Devotion, desire, ecstasy, tensions, disappointments, sorrows. The musical idea of the album is to develop the beauty in Persian poetry and the vocal tradition within the framework of a playful meeting between Iranian contemporary instrumental music and a jazz pianist. The recording was done in Jakob Culture Church in Oslo in September 2014 by the sound engineer Martin Abrahamsen and the producer Erik Hillestad. The album was released internationally from the end of January 2015.
Mahsa Vahdat is a singer who develops the rich Persian vocal tradition. She brings about both Persian, classical poetry (Hafez, Rumi, Saadi, Khayyam) and the contemporary one. She has a long career as recording artist on the Norwegian label KKV including collaborations with Knut Reiersrud, the mixed choir SKRUK, Mighty Sam McClain and most of all with her sister Marjan Vahdat. ”Traces of an Old Vineyard” is the first record in which she appears under her own name only.
Together with Marjan Vahdat and other collaborators, Mahsa has done an international career with concerts in many countries in Europe, Asia and America. She will participate in many festivals in Europe, Australia and New Zealand during the coming spring. At the time she works with a new album with no instruments (a cappella). In 2010 Mahsa received the “Freemuse Award”, and in 2012 the Vahdat sisters were given the ”Independent Music Award” for the record ”Twinklings of Hope”. Last summer the web magazine ”Iranwire” presented Mahsa on a list of the 50 most influential Iranian women through the last 200 years.