Pejman Akbarzadeh

Pejman Akbarzadeh
Pejman Akbarzadeh, Tropentheater, Amsterdam, 2009
Born	1980 (age 36–37) Shiraz, Iran

Pejman Akbarzadeh (Persian: پژمان اكبرزاده‎‎) is a Persian-Dutch pianist, researcher, journalist and radio producer.

Born in Shiraz in 1980, Akbarzadeh had his first music lessons at the age of nine from "Gholam Loghmani" and later from Bahram Nasrollahi. In 2001 moved to Tehran and continued his piano studies under Farman Behboud.

At age fifteen he started to research the works and activities of twentieth-century Persian (Iranian) composers and conductors. Three years later he published the first volume of his projected four-volume work, Persian Musicians which became a source for various publications such as Encyclopedia Iranica.

Pejman Akbarzadeh has written articles in both Persian and English, mostly on cultural topics, which have been published in BBC Persian Service Online, "Persian Heritage Magazine" (New Jersey), "Shargh Newspaper" (Tehran), "Rahavard Quarterly" (Los Angeles), "Gooya.com" (Brussels), "Payvand.com" (San Francisco)... and Yas-e-no Daily, which was banned in Iran in 2003.

From 2002 to 2006 Akbarzadeh was the representative of Persian Gulf Online organization in Tehran. He has published various articles about this waterway in both English and Persian. He also lectured at the Persian Studies Foundation conference in Shiraz and Iranian Artists Forum in Tehran. The text of most of these lectures were published in "Shargh" daily.

In 2006, Akbarzadeh moved to the Netherlands, citing restrictions on musical life and freedom of speech in Iran. He is currently a senior producer at Radio Zamaneh in Amsterdam.

In March 2008 he performed the first Persian piano recital in Amsterdam. The sold-out concert at Bethanienklooster resulted in further invitations to perform in Germany and Canada. In August 2008 Pejman dedicated his recital at the University of Cologne to Ahmad Batebi, symbol of pro-democracy movement of Tehran University students, who fled to the United States after nine years of imprisonment in the same year.