Sanaz & friends

Sanaz: voice and lyrics

Benjamin Stein: santoor, tar, baglama and oud

Steffen Thormählen: Percussion,

Uwe Böttcher: double bass, violin and viola

Mohamed Najem: Clarinet

Sanaz's  songs and poems really get under your skin. They are about longing: for  love, freedom and for self-determination. Sometimes with a gentle,  sometimes with a strong voice, but always impressive, always  provocative, the poet and singer recites her mystical texts. Further she  also sets these texts to music and performs them together with her  repertoire of Turkish and Azerbaijani folk songs.  Sanaz comes from  the Azerbaijani territory of Iran. The silencing of all female voices  and the threat of reprisals against a critical, creative woman caused  her to leave her home country in 2008 and move to Germany in 2010, after  two years spent in Istanbul.  She began her musical career in 2012  with the music group "Mah-e Manouche", which won the sponsorship award  of the cultural department of the town of Wuppertal in 2017/18.  Encouraged  by the immensely positive feedback and praise of many fellow artists,  musicians and critics she started a new project in 2019, in which she  recites her own texts in Persian and German and sings songs from Persia,  Azerbaijan and Turkey.  She is accompanied by an illustrious  ensemble of outstanding musicians: Benjamin Stein on oud, baglama,  santoor and tar, by Uwe Böttcher on double bass, violin and viola and by  Steffen Thormählen on various percussion instruments.    https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCmZ7aZmWZI5EM716Kbue5aw/videos

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Fotos @ Manfred Leuchter, Lucie Ahmad, Marcus Meierhöfer