Arash’s newest release: Soul to Soul
Elsewhere
With Closed Eyes is Arash’s release which marks his transition from the more traditional Persian folk music of his previous albums to more contemporary New Age music. This latest album is an exciting collection of his own moving piano solo compositions.
Discover the stories behind the songs:
Dilemma
Dilemma is about making choices, about doubt. It’s a piece steeped in Arash’s personal experience when he had to make a decision about the best route to pursue, a decision that took two years of inner struggle.
The soon-to-be released video depicting that conflict will take the form of an Argentine tango where the dancer is torn between music and the man with whom she wants to dance.
The Joy of Storm
The Joy of Storm dramatizes the human struggle with challenges over which one has no control yet facing them head-on until resolution is achieved. In creating the video Arash collaborated with renowned dancer/choreographer Shahrokh Moshkin Ghalam to create a video in which the dancer unleashes his emotion in a downpour, fully giving himself up to elements that are greater than him.
Searching for Paradise
Searching for Paradise, for which Arash also created an animated video, reflects the frustration of daily urban routine and industrialization and the search for a more peaceful environment.
Glittering Waves
Glittering Waves is a contemplative piece mirroring the feeling of a peaceful walk on the beach as the sun dances off the ocean’s waves.
Liberation
The ties that bind sometimes bind too tightly. Liberation expresses the desire to be free of the prison those ties can become, whether it be the routine of life or relationships that impede you from being your best self.
Journey of Life
Journey of Life is the story of human life from conception and birth to childhood through adulthood and finally old age. It encapsulates the joys and sorrows, hopes and fears as well as the challenges along the way.
Ray of Sunshine
Ray of Sunshine is rooted in the profound loss of a life gone too soon, composed after Arash lost a close friend and colleague to illness. She had been a ray of sunshine in the life of many, a woman who loved life, people – and sunny days by the ocean. Ray of Sunshine recalls those joyous moments as well as reflecting the sorrow.
Solitude
Solitude expresses the feeling of being alone but not lonely, enjoying solitude, being in one’s own world while needing to reposition. To set the scene for the video Arash searched for a “no man’s land, a desolate place.” It could have been a desert but because it was mid-winter in Ontario he chose a frozen snow-swept lake.
Bundled against the chill, Arash, hunches over the keys, with eyes closed, lost in his own emotions, transferring his feelings onto a piano that stands in stark contrast to the icy, rocky terrain and soft grey skies, a moody metaphor for his quiet reflective state.
Born Again
Born Again captures the ups and downs of life, rising again after falling, joy and sadness, difficulties faced and overcome, lessons gleaned from a spectrum of experiences. Like the cycle of the seasons the music ebbs and flows reflecting our ever changing emotions.
The video was shot in Geneva, one of the participating cities in “Street Pianos”, an art project created by British artist Luke Jerram in Birmingham U.K. in 2008 to inspire conversation between strangers “and to provoke them into enjoying, activating and claiming ownership of their urban landscape.”
He placed 15 pianos across the city. It’s a piece of public art that has gone viral in its reach – more than 1400 pianos in public places in 47 cities world-wide in London, Paris, New York and from Hong Kong to Hangzhou, Albany to Adelaide, Lima to Luxembourg, Barcelona to Belfast and from Toronto to Toowoomba Australia. “Street Pianos” has reached more than six million people across the globe.
As Arash played his arresting composition on pianos across Geneva he was part of this movement, inspiring not just conversation but a wellspring of emotions in all who stopped to listen.
Unforgivable Love
Unforgivable Love captures the visceral force of conflicted love. Its cadence and rhythm replicate the human breath force experienced through a wide range of emotions.
Existence
Existence explores a journey into the unconscious, into dreams and the terrifying paralyzed state of dreaming when one feels intensely threatened with a false sense of wakefulness yet unable to call out of move. It’s a deep state of sleep when the body is actually paralyzed.
The composition takes the concept a stage further. It’s a tension filled musical narrative about a comatose patient whose state is monitored by a beeping machine. While in the coma he dreams he is paralyzed and fighting for existence. The piece takes the audience in and out of the dream but the patient remains in the comatose state as the sound of the monitor fades.
With Closed Eyes
The song which also serves as the album’s title chronicles a dream-like peaceful, journey reflective of the most recent years in Arash’s life, now calm and serene, a result of his connection to yoga. With Closed Eyes will serve as a signature piece for his live yoga piano accompaniment.
“Music has been healing for me,” he says. “The healing power of music is something I want to share with others.”