Biography

Kaveh Yaghmaei (born December 12, 1968) .He is an award-winning Iranian-Canadian singer, songwriter, producer, guitarist, arranger, pianist, keyboardist, flutist.

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

In 1976, at the tender age of eight, Kaveh started learning music at the Tehran Conservatory of Music under Ms. Novin Afrouz. Although he had been making excellent progress in his classical piano studies, his first instrument studies were shut down in 1979 due to the Iranian Revolution.

After two years, the Tehran 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.

Some of his many influences include:

• Baroque and classical music
• 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, he recorded his first single with the Tehran Symphony Orchestra members at Saba Studio.

In 1990, he began recording albums with his father, including Diar, Sib e Noghrei, Mah o Palang, Kaboos, Arayesh e Khorshid, Tofang e Dasteh Noghreh and Malek Jamshid. Sib e Noghrei was the first pop music album to be recorded and successfully released in Iran since the 1979 revolution.

In 1992, Kaveh performed concerts with Kourosh Yaghmaei in several Scandinavian countries.

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 today’s biggest Iranian pop stars Sirvan Khosravi. He introduced them to the music industry and the Iranian public at large.

In 1994, he 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. 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 current western-style concerts had previously been banned in Iran from 1979 until that day.

In 1997, he established his band, Kaveh Band, which has since performed 102+ concerts mainly in Iran and Canada.

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

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

The same year, Babak & Kaveh’s band won the Best Band of the Year award at the 1st Fajr Pop Music Festival Awards.

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).

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

In 2003, Kaveh released his first solo album Matarsak (ScareCrow), which became Iran’s best-selling pop album of the year.

The same year, he also released his concert’s official DVD, marking the first time any performer in Iran professionally recorded a multitrack concert with high-quality audio and video for a DVD.

In 2005, he released his second album, Sokoot e Sard (Cold Silence), 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.

In 2008, he performed in Vancouver and 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).

In 2016, he released his third solo album, Manshour, which 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

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. This event was seen as a significant cultural milestone.

He wrote and arranged Houman Ghafoori’s album Suddenly Gone the same year. 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 afterward.

He also provided guitars, vocals, and arrangements for a soundtrack featuring Sirvan Khosravi for the famous Iranian TV series Nahange Abi.

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