Zoe Rahman
| Zoe Rahman | |
|---|---|
Rahman performing live in June 2008
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| Background information | |
| Born |
20 January 1971 Chichester, West Sussex, England |
| Origin | London, England |
| Genres | Jazz |
| Occupation(s) | |
| Instruments | |
| Years active | 1998–present |
| Labels | Manushi Records |
| Associated acts | Idris Rahman |
| Website | www |
Zoe Rahman (born 20 January 1971) is an English jazz composer and pianist.
Rahman was born and brought up in Chichester, West Sussex, England by a Bengali father, Mizan Rahman, and an English-Irish mother. Her mother was a doctor who grew up in New Zealand. Rahman describes her childhood as being "completely English" and has described herself as culturally "very English". Her father's family is from Dhaka. Her maternal grandmother is from Ireland.
Rahman started off playing classical piano when she was about four years old. Her family had a piano that her parents had bought for £10 and Raman's older sister started to play - her other two siblings and Rahman followed her footsteps. Rahman and her younger brother, Idris, got into listening to jazz when they were teenagers and tried to work out how to play. Rahman had jazz piano lessons with various teachers and found opportunities to gig with other musicians.
She studied classical piano at the Royal Academy of Music, a music degree at St Hugh's College, University of Oxford, and won a scholarship to study jazz performance at Berklee College of Music in Boston, where she had lessons with pianist JoAnne Brackeen. While in America she formed her own trio, which featured bassist Joshua Davis and drummer Bob Moses.
In 2002, Rahman discovered Bengali music, when her father was hospitalised and she had transferred some of his cassette tapes of 1950s Bengali music to CDs for him to listen to while he recuperated. Rahman became intrigued by the sounds and subsequent trips to Bangladesh allowed Rahman to learn about her background through music.
Rahman has been the featured artist on radio and television programmes such as Courtney Pine's Jazz Crusade on BBC Radio 2, BBC Radio 4's Woman's Hour, BBC London's Now's the Time, Andrea Oliver's The Selector, Northern Broadcasting Internet Radio, Resonance FM and Julian Joseph's Jazz series for Meridian Television. She has performed live on the BBC World Service and on BBC Radio 3's In Tune.
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