Kaveh Yaghmaei

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Kaveh Yaghmaei, born December 12, 1968, is an Iranian-Canadian musician, singer, songwriter, guitarist, arranger, pianist, keyboardist, flutist and producer whose career spans across 33 years in the entertainment industry.

He was born in Tehran, Iran, into a well-known family of musicians. His father, Kourosh Yaghmaei, is a legendary musician who was a pioneer of electric guitar and rock music and is considered the godfather of psychedelic rock music in Iran in the 1960s.

In 1976, at the tender age of eight, Kaveh begin attending Honarestan Moosighi of Tehran and started learning music at the Tehran Conservatory of Music under the tutelage of Ms. Novin Afrouz. Although he had been making excellent progress in his studies of classical piano, his first instrument, the conservatory was shut down in 1979 due to the Iranian Revolution.  At this stage, he began to learn progressive rock, a style of music that was not taught anywhere in the country at the time.

However, after two years, the conservatory reopened, and in 1988 Kaveh received a music diploma, with flute as his main instrument. Meanwhile, he was also learning guitar, songwriting, arranging and studio recording techniques from his father and uncles Kamran Yaghmaei and Kambiz Yaghmaei.

Kaveh Yaghmaei was one of the few Iranian rock singers who worked after the revolution with the official permission of the Ministry of Guidance and even held a concert in 1994 that was called the first Iranian rock concert after the revolution. He is the first musician after the 1979 revolution who effectively resurrected Iranian rock music.

Kaveh has won six National and International Music Awards for Best Composer, Best Arranger, Bestselling album, Best Band and Best Lyrics. In 2017, Kaveh won the Best Pop Album of the Year Award at the International Fajr Music Festival, Iran’s most prestigious music festival. The festival is affiliated with UNESCO and includes national and international competition sections. Winning the Best Album Award at the Fajr Festival is one of the highest musical achievements in Iran and it shows Kaveh’s extraordinary abilities in both music production and performance. His awards include:

1993: 15th Fajr Music Festival Award for Best Performance of the Year;

1999: 1st Fajr Pop Music Award for Best Band of the Year for his “Babak and Kaveh” collaboration;

2017: Musicema Barbod and Nakisa Award for Best Pop-Rock Album of the Year (based on the opinions of music experts and notable professional musicians) for the album Manshour;

2017 Chelcheragh People’s Choice Award for Best Lyrics for the album Manshour; and

2018: 33rd Fajr Music Festival Award and Barbod trophy for Best Pop Songwriter of the Year for the album Suddenly Gone.

Some of Kaveh's many influences include Baroque and classical music and classic rock bands such as Deep Purple, Rush, Supermax, Jethro Tull, Jeff Beck, AC/DC, Camel, The Ventures, Dire Straits, Elton John, Alan Parson and Eric Clapton.

In 1989, Keveh recorded his first single with members of the Tehran Symphony Orchestra at Saba Studio.  In 1990, he began recording albums with his father, including Sib e Noghrei, Mah o Palag, Kaboos, Diyar, Arayesh e Khorshid, Tofang e Dasteh Noghreh and Malek Jamshid. Sib e Noghrei was the first pop music album to be released in Iran since the 1979 revolution.  In 1992, Kaveh performed concerts with Kourosh Yaghmaei in several Scandinavian countries.

In 1994, Kaveh began his Bachelor of Music studies at the Azad University of Tehran, specializing in classical guitar.

In 1995, Kaveh formed a band with Babak Amini called Babak & Kaveh, and together they were the first musicians following the revolution to hold an official concert in the modern western style. This was a landmark occasion, as modern western-style concerts had previously been banned in Iran from 1979 until that day.  The same year, Babak & Kaveh band won the Best Band of the Year award at the 1st Fajr Pop Music Festival Awards.

In 1997, Kaveh established his own band, Kaveh Band, which has since performed 102+ concerts mainly in Iran but also in Sweden, Norway and Canada.

In 1998, Kaveh started arranging and producing for several artists and has since released over 50 albums and singles.

In 1999, he married Niloofar Farzandshad, who is also a classical pianist and musician that graduated from the Tehran Conservatory of Music and Trinity College of London. They began their professional music collaboration at that time as well.

In 2000, for the first time in Iran, Kaveh established an electric guitar field at the University of Applied Science and Technology that focused on rock music and related music techniques (speed picking, chord progressions, music theory, etc.).

In 2001, Kaveh and Niloofar immigrated to Canada and became Canadian citizens.

In 2003, Kaveh released his first solo album Matarsak (Scare Crow), which became Iran’s best-selling pop album of the year. The same year, he also released his concert’s official DVD, which marked the first time that any performer in Iran professionally recorded a multi-track concert with high-quality audio and video for a DVD.

In addition to his first solo album, Kaveh has released two other solo albums, Sokoote Sard (Cold Silence) in 2007, and Manshour in 2016, all of which reached top ranks on international music charts. Some of these achievements include the No. 1 rank on the PMC TV’s Top 20 music chart (include info on PMC). He also ranked No. 7 on the iTunes 200 charts in Canada, No. 12 on the iTunes charts in Germany and was included in Apple Music Best Song Collections in 2018.

Kaveh's second album in 2007, Sokoot e Sard (Cold Silence) was released in the United States on Taraneh Records. Three songs from this album entered the PMC TV Top Twenty chart, and one of them, “Avalin Harf”, became the #1 song on this chart.

Kaveh's third solo album, in 2016, Manshour, became the bestselling pop-rock album of the year in Iran and received the following awards:

• 2017 International Fajr Music Festival Award for Best Pop Album of the Year

• 2017 Musicema Festival Award for Best Pop-Rock Album of the Year (based on the opinions of music experts and notable professional musicians)

• 2017 Musicema Barbod and Nakisa Award for Best Pop-Rock Album of the year (based on the opinions of music experts and notable professional musicians)

• 2017 Chelcheragh People’s Choice Award for Best Lyrics

In 2008, Kaveh performed in Vancouver, along with his wife and Canadian band members. Since then he has worked with several well-known international musicians and producers, including Daniel Adair (from Nickelback and Three Doors Down), Brian Poulsen, David Edward Valentine Spidel, Frank Baker, Shane Gaalaas, Andranic Madadian and Ben Kaplan (of Kaplan Krunch Studios).

Since 2016, his concerts in Iran have been attended by 20,000+ people every year.

Since 2017, he has released three singles: “Safar” (with Shahrokh Izadkhah), “Kouleh” and “Dejavu”, as well as two music videos (for Kouleh and Dejavu).

In 2018, for the first time in 40 years, Kaveh received special permission from the Iranian government to perform with his Canadian and American band members in Iran—an event that was seen as a major cultural milestone.  The same year, he wrote and arranged Houman Ghafoori’s album Suddenly Gone, for which Kaveh received the Barbod trophy and Best Pop Songwriter of the Year award at the 33rd Fajr Music Festival Awards.

In 2019, he held a two-night, three-performance concert at the prestigious Tehran Ministry of Interior Hall and embarked on a cross-Iran tour afterwards.

In July 2021, he released his new album “Adamhaye Shabzadeh”.

For more than two decades, Kaveh has arranged and produced music for various popular artists and released over 50 albums and singles in collaboration with them.

During all these years, starting when he was 18, he taught music production to and helped develop many notable musicians, including Peyman Niksar, Ali Ghadi, Ario Habibi and one of the biggest Iranian pop stars of today, Sirvan Khosravi. He not only introduced them to the country’s music industry but also the Iranian public at large.

Kaveh has a background in teaching advanced music courses at the Azad University of Tehran and worked as a judge in singing tournaments at the Ahura Music School.  Kaveh has an excellent track record in training and introducing many musicians and pop singers to the music industry.

Kaveh has been working with the Honar-e Aval Production Company as the Head Member of Art Management, as well as Recruiter, Music Producer, Arranger and Composer, since March 2018.

Kaveh has been working with Sorna Academy since 2003 as a course and syllabus designer for arrangement and electronic music production, electric and acoustic guitar, vocal, recording and sound engineering lessons. He has also held master classes for Sorna Academy educators and university students.

Kaveh has worked with the Ahura Learning Center since 2017. His teaching duties have included the following subjects: composition, orchestration, specialized piano, specialized guitar and specialized vocal.

As a result of his 13 years of unique academic education both at the Tehran Conservatory of Music and at Azad University, Kaveh has been able to train and develop many notable musicians, including one of the biggest Iran pop starts of today, Sirvan Khosravi. He not only introduced them to the country’s music industry but also the Iranian public at large.

Given Kaveh's extraordinary abilities in performance, production and artist development, it is clear that he has pushed the musical boundaries in Iran and developed many notable musicians along his musical journey. Kaveh intends to collaborate with top musicians in the United States.

Kaveh is extremely capable of training new generations of artists as a mentor/teacher and develop them into successful international musicians.

References

https://kavehyaghmaeiofficial.com/

https://www.last.fm/music/Kaveh+Yaghmaei

https://www.imdb.com/name/nm12448797/bio

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