Unspoken Mahan Mirarab

• 1 First Idea 03:46
• 2 Unspoken 03:53
• 3 A Way to Mourn 04:07
• 4 Hawari Funk 03:08
• 5 Choopan 42 03:53
• 6 Banoo 02:39
• 7 Lars in Isfahan 04:20
• 8 Sparkling Dark Gaze 03:36
• 9 Weissensee 03:13
• 10 Pıçıldaşın, Ləpələr 04:20
• 11 Jina 04:53
• 12 In a Silent Way 01:51
• Total Runtime 43:39

Info for Unspoken

Unspoken, the ACT debut album from Mahan Mirarab, opens up a whole world of personal, deeply felt stories. The Iranian-born, Vienna-based guitarist draws on his experience of East and West, darkness and beauty, sorrow and joy. His music reveals perspectives which are profoundly human, intimate and sensitive, in album which is emerging at a time full of tensions and contradictions. He performs solo on the double-neck guitar and on some tracks is also joined by Kian Soltani (cello), Lars Danielsson (double bass) and Golnar Shahyar (vocals). His is a unique and personal musical journey: jazz blends with influences from classical and folk music from Iran, with European chamber music, imbued profoundly with the spirit of song.

Mahan Mirarab was born in Tehran. He started playing piano and guitar as a child and, at the age of 14, joined a Pink Floyd cover band as a bassist. Through the Tehran underground scene, Mahan Mirarab came into closer contact with Western music such as jazz and progressive rock. Resources were scarce; the music was mainly learned recordings on black-market traded cassettes. Through these, Mahan Mirarab also discovered the music of American jazz musicians such as Bud Powell, Chick Corea and George Benson. He listened to their music so often that he could soon sing along to every single solo and eventually transcribed them for the guitar. All this was a considerable risk, as Mahan Mirarab recalls: “Owning music cassettes was a criminal offence. I had a friend who ended up in prison because of a copied jazz tape.” Yet Mirarab’s curiosity for this unfamiliar music burned brightly. One group in which he played in was a Weather Report covers band which mainly performed at events in embassies. The Austrian ambassador in Teheran was a huge Joe Zawinul fan and it was he who gave assistance to Mahan Mirarab – who had long since made it his aim to discover the (musical) world beyond his homeland – to leave the country. This is how Mirarab arrived in Vienna in 2009, and it is where he still lives today.

Once he had moved to Vienna, Mahan Mirarab, who had previously studied architecture in Iran, made the decision not to pursue a degree in music. He preferred to get to know the scene, launch his own projects and, above all, play the music that suited him personally, far removed from institutional structures. In 2009, he recorded his first trio album, which explored jazz from a Persian perspective. This approach gradually gained him a foothold in the scene; he played concerts in local jazz clubs and at smaller festivals, and he was able to forge important contacts. His first international experiences followed, and eventually a joint project with his wife, the singer Golnar Shahyar, became an international success, with concerts worldwide and attention growing. At the same time, Mahan Mirarab felt increasingly that he could only hold his own if he was able to constantly demonstrate every facet of his skill as a musician and composer. This imperative was something which grew in him without his being fully aware of it. It was a kind of survival strategy for the new environment, but the effect was that he felt somehow driven to be constantly aspiring for perfection.

When ACT director and producer Andreas Brandis first became aware of Mahan Mirarab, the musician promptly sent him a whole mountain of varied material to consider. But it was one small solo sketch that really clicked: “Among the tracks I’d sent to ACT was a ‘first idea’,” recalls Mahan Mirarab, “and Andreas Brandis and Michael Gottfried from the label said pretty quickly: ‘That’s the one, let’s delve deeper into this and produce a whole solo album together.’ That way of working was something that I found very liberating, like being given permission not to always need to show everything I can do, but simply being allowed to be myself.” Mahan Mirarab and Andreas Brandis met in person several times, including once in Paris. They also spoke a lot on the phone and discussed a host of solo ideas which ultimately formed the basis for the album Unspoken.

It was during this collaborative process that the idea arose to invite guests for some tracks on the album. For example, the classical cellist Kian Soltani also hails from Iran. As Mahan Mirarab notes, there are also other important similarities between the two: “Kian is a perfect classical cellist, but he’s also a really good improviser, and a brilliant composer too. I wrote cello parts for him, and he completely rearranged them and brought a whole load of great creativity to the table.” Mahan Mirarab has long been familiar with bassist Lars Danielsson, even though the two only met in person recently. “I’ve known Lars since my time in Iran – I mean, from a recording with John Abercrombie. Later, I learnt many of his compositions, just for myself because I liked them so much. In both his compositions and his improvisations, Lars has this incredible awareness of dynamics, harmony and space in the music. It was important to me to get to know him as a person too. That’s why I flew to Gothenburg especially to make sure I could record with him in the same room. Although there was plenty of space there, we sat very close together – which made our playing together particularly intense and immediate.” The relationship with the singer Golnar Shahyar couldn’t be closer: she and Mahan Mirarab are also a couple in real life. Having spent a great deal of time together on stage and in the studio since 2011, they have focused more on their own projects in recent years. But there remains a special connection and affinity. Their great skill, deep familiarity and emotional empathy are palpable on the album.

Indeed, there is not a shadow of a doubt: everything about Unspoken is personal. The tracks “Banoo” and “A Way to Mourn” tell the story of Mahan Mirarab’s grandmother, who passed away during the recording sessions. In the track “Jina”, the personal meets the collective: in Kurdish, the title means “life” and is inextricably linked to the young woman Jina Mahsa Amini, whose death in the custody of the Iranian morality police in 2022 sparked a nationwide protest movement. These were events that profoundly changed Mahan Mirarab. For a long time, he was unable to write about them; it was only working on Unspoken that gave him the courage to do so. “Sparkling” is Mahan Mirarab’s favourite track, penned by his wife Golnar, and the version of “In a Silent Way” is a nod to Joe Zawinul, whose influence once proved to be the opener of so many doors in his life. And the instrument Mahan Mirarab used to record Unspoken is also a bespoke, one-off creation by Turkish luthier Ekrem Özkarpat: a double-necked guitar with both a fretless and a fretted fingerboard. This instrument serves as a metaphor for the two worlds between which Mahan Mirarab has moved and which meet in his music: the Western world structured on semitones and the microtonal world of his native country.

If one asks Mahan Mirarab how he feels about the current situation in Iran and how this is reflected in his music, he has to think about it for a long time. “It’s difficult to witness what’s happening right now from a distance. I lived in Iran for 25 years, have an incredible number of memories, and my parents and many of my friends still live there. That makes me very sad. But my connection to my country of origin isn’t a national one. Ultimately, it doesn’t matter where wars and conflicts take place – it’s always about people who feel the same way all over the world. I think it’s important to remain attentive, sensitive and empathetic, to reflect in some way on what is happening around us.” It is this human reflection on the world with all its inherent contradictions that makes Unspoken so unique, moving and fulfilling.

Mahan Mirarab, guitar, fretless guitar, oud
Kian Soltani, cello (tracks 9, 11, 5)
Lars Danielsson, bass (tracks 7, 3)
Golnar Shahyar, vocals (track 8)

Mahan Mirarab
is a musician and composer. He grew up in the Iranian capital Tehran and lives in Vienna. Anyone who listens to Mirarab play his multi-neck guitar understands the» honest language« the artist articulates in his music.

European elements of chamber music combined with contemporary forms of jazz. They open a new interpretation of Iranian classical music.

He represents a generation of young migrant musicians in Europe who are changing the sound borders in the music industry and are pushing for more diversity with respect to quality, dialogue, and creativity. His aim is to introduce a new narrative through music in regard to middle eastern cultures and jazz and in doing so he has succeeded to create his complex yet approachable style.

His approach to composition and arrangement introduces a unique blend of rhythms and harmonies that showcases his rich musical vocabulary as well as his depth of knowledge in many different music styles. As a result, his compositions avoid so brilliantly cliche and expand the understanding of how each style can be interpreted. Mirarab is composing, arranging, and performing in many jazz, experimental, acoustic/electronic, folk, and traditional projects as well as film, dance, and theatre.

In 2022, Mirarab played over 70 concerts around the world. He also released his latest album, recorded with his fixed sextet during the Corona Pandemic. With »Say Your Most Beautiful Word« Mirarab finds a way of articulation that goes beyond playing the guitar. It’s as much a request as it is a guide to confronting and communicating one’s feelings — an attitude toward life grounded in trust and culminating in one word: Hope.

Jazz, therefore, defines as a kind of philosophy by Mirarab. It is a way of solidarity, how to fight for one’s identity, he says. »As a migrant in Europe, I bring strong influences from my cultural background «, Mirarab amplifies. »Through the philosophy of jazz, I find my own language, with the help of which I can break out of traditional conventions.«

That this liberation is evident in the combination of elements of European and Persian classical music is becoming increasingly important to Mirarab. He doesn’t present tradition, but represents it anew — in music that provokes practical diversion and analytical complexion, but is always defined by the relationship of rhythm to the body: »Even if the pieces are difficult to play, the focus is on making it groove.«

Songs like “Haj Ghorban” and “A Week of Moonlight” dazzle with Mirarab’s enigmatic, transcendent guitar playing, fusing Middle Eastern textures with traditional jazz rhythms." (All About Jazz)

Booklet for Unspoken