About

Pianist and composer Tara Kamangar’s repertoire spans rarely heard works by Iranian composers of the past century, her piano transcriptions of beloved orchestral and string repertoire, and her compositions. Described as "a true Romantic spirit" (The American Record Guide), she has performed to capacity audiences in North America, Europe, and the Middle East, at venues including Carnegie Hall, Walt Disney Concert Hall, London’s Cadogan Hall, and Stockholm’s Södra Teatern. Tara’s orchestral engagements have included concertos by Beethoven, Grieg, Saint-Saëns, and Rachmaninoff, as well as the American premieres of Aminollah Hossein’s piano concertos.

An avid recording artist, Tara’s album East of Melancholy reached the Top 20 of Billboard’s Classical Albums chart and was featured on Virgin America flights. Tracing musical connections between Iran and Russia, the album was praised by The New York Times as “an alluring compilation... rendered with passionate, soulful conviction,” while NPR called it “an exquisite album,” and The American Record Guide described it as “intellectually and inspirationally, a captivating recital.” Her work as a composer has been released on the Delos, Evidence Classics, and Aparté labels, with distribution through Naxos and Harmonia Mundi.

While a student at London’s Royal Academy of Music, Tara performed Aminollah Hossein’s complete piano works and gave UK premieres of piano works by Hossein, Loris Tjeknavorian, Behzad Ranjbaran, and Hormoz Farhat, among other Iranian composers whose music has been underrepresented in the Western musical canon amid Iran’s political and cultural upheavals. Her own compositions often incorporate elements of Kurdish and Persian traditional music, informed by her studies in ethnomusicology and her ethnic background. Also a lifelong violinist, she has drawn on her appreciation for the string repertoire to adapt over thirty orchestral and string works for the piano.

Tara’s interest in exploring new contexts for classical music has led to collaborations with musicians across traditions, from Spanish classical guitarist Angel Romero to Pentatonix cellist and beatboxer Kevin Olusola. She has presented lecture-recitals at TEDxLA and leading universities, toured as a violinist with an Iranian rock band, and performed as a pianist and violinist with the urban-classical project Triptyq Sessions, which debuted at No. 1 on the iTunes classical chart. Her film work includes composing the original score for Mitra Farahani’s acclaimed documentary Fifi Howls from Happiness and serving as Music Director for See You Friday, Robinson, featuring Ebrahim Golestan and Jean-Luc Godard, for which she crafted an all-Beethoven soundtrack and provided historical anecdotes.

Tara is an honors graduate of Harvard University, where she studied Social Anthropology with a focus on ethnomusicology, and the Royal Academy of Music in London, where she studied Piano Performance.