Gifted and prolific singer, composer and instrumentalist Azam Ali released her opus From Night to the Edge of Day on April 19, 2011 in Canada on label Terrestrial Lane/Cross Current Music/Outside, in Turkey and the Middle East on the Istanbul-based label DoubleMoon and in all other territories with Six Degrees out of San Francisco. This broad reach is very much in the spirit of her fifteen-year career as a remarkable voice that graced numerous recordings, film scores and best- selling world music albums by the groundbreaking duo Vas, several solo releases, collaborative projects and more recently as a co-founder of the critically acclaimed group Niyaz.

Azam launches her new work in a premier performance in her adopted new home of Montreal on Tuesday, May 10th – 7 :30pm at the Salle du Gèsu in a co-presentation by Traquen’Art and Terrestrial Lane. Azam is accompanied by her closest of partners, Loga R. Torkian, both the musicial director and producer of the recording, performing on lafta, kamaan and saz. Musicians Kiya and Ziya Tabassian, best known for their own careers with the group Constantinople perform respectively on setar and percussion. The ensemble closes out with Sheila Hannigan on cello.

Born in Iran, growing up in India since the age of 4, immigrating to the USA in 1985, then to Canada and settling in Montreal in 2010, her musical career has been evolutionary, from an instrumentalist, to a singer to a composer. Her formal training covers various vocal traditions from Western classical, Indian, Persian and East European, but foremost it is her passion to explore the immense potential of the human voice, transcending language, cultural and spiritual barriers when expressing true emotion that has garnered her an important following in World Music and with music lovers beyond that definition and across many borders. From Night to the Edge of Day is just such a project with a subtext – a collection of lullabies from the Middle East. It is music that has been inspired by the birth of her son Iman which led her to reflect on the lives of millions of children born in Diaspora, far from their homeland and far from the traditions that have shaped us as people. Azam’s own words describe best the direction of the project :

“I learned that lullabies are so much more than just musical and rhythmic tools to soothe a child. They are in fact a medium by which a mother can send direct messages to her child about life, nature, joy, pain, affection etc. It is through these invisible waves that a mother can make the child’s spirit familiar with the beauties of the world. This profound realization on my part inspired me to want to create a lullaby CD that is sophisticated and appealing for adults, but is dedicated to all the children from the Middle East who are born far from their homeland, specifically from the tumultuous regions of the Middle East where children have paid the greater price for social and political conflicts suffered, like Iran, Palestine, Turkey, Afghanistan etc.”

Azam Ali – voice and percussion
Loga R. Torkian – lafta, kamaan and saz
Kiya Tabassian – setar
Sheila Hannigan – cello
Ziya Tabassian – percussion