(from Alwan for the Arts' website): About Negar Booban: "Brought up in a family of music lovers and musicians, I had tried to play "santoor" and "setar", but none were taken seriously. It was only at the age of 18 when I heard the sound of an Oud that I felt a sort of magic, and I just knew that I had to play it." "Expression is what I most seek in music. Without discovering a distant or unseen part of the human soul, what can music be?" "I believe that the whole course of life is a chance to discover, a quest to go through, not a game to play or a contest to win. So, in my music I strongly pursue a path to the inner side, mine or anyone’s, a ray of light to shed on a corner of one's soul, maybe." -Negar Booban Born in Tehran in 1973, Negar Booban studied at the Faculty of Fine Arts, University of Tehran, earning an MA in Architecture with her design of Tehran’s future Conservatory. Focusing on special acoustic design, she concurrently studied music and musical acoustics, becoming interested in the principles of Iranian music of the past. Negar mastered the oud and Iranian radif (a collection of old melodies handed down by masters to students throughout the generations) and since 1994 has worked with numerous ensembles of Iranian classical music. She has given over one hundred performances, including the Fajr and Yas Music Festivals, and made several recordings. Negar is also deeply involved with the art of improvisation, both in traditional dastgah (Persian musical modal system) and in free improvisation on themes of various origins and modes. Her solo oud album Payaapey (Continuous) was released in August 2008. She holds a PhD in Art Research, with her dissertation on a comparative study of rhythm in Iranian music and Persian language and is currently an instructor of oud at the Tehran Conservatory of Music.