Golnar Shahyar

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BIOGRAPHY

Golnar Shahyar is an Iranian–Canadian vocalist, composer, poet, producer, educator, and cultural advocate based in Vienna whose music braids improvisation, storytelling, and activism. Her debut album *Tear Drop* earned a German Jazz Prize nomination (2023), cited by the jury for its “outstanding vocal qualities” and top-tier production. She also won second prize at the Austrian Jazz Prize 2025 in the Best Live Act category. Treating the voice as both instrument and narrator, she writes for small and large forces—among them the Vision String Quartet, Beyond the Roots Large Ensemble, and Songs of Radical Kindness—and appears as a soloist and composer with orchestras including the Tonkünstler-Orchester, as well as with the NDR Bigband. She has also collaborated with various theater, opera, and performance productions as a performer, composer, and co-writer—such as Theatre Hybrid (in cooperation with Johann Strauss 2025 Wien & Tanzquartier Wien), Musikverein Wien & Philharmonie Luxemburg, Deutsche Oper Berlin & Opéra Orchestre national Montpellier, and Wenn Es Soweit Ist productions, to name a few.

Whether with Choub, Gabbeh, the Golnar & Mahan Trio, or as GolNar, she dissolves genre borders, drawing equally from Western Asia and North Africa and from contemporary Europe and the Americas. Her poetry—“Love Is” and “This Is Not My Voice,” among others—seeds the music: lines become motifs, motifs open into improvisations, and voice, text, and movement converge into performances that heighten empathy, vulnerability, power, and dignity. Guided by the conviction that art and society are inseparable, she mentors emerging artists as a guest lecturer and workshop director through invited teaching at MDW, the University Mozarteum Salzburg, and the Sibelius Academy, and extends this practice to public forums—among other public activities—via curating, podium discussions, and keynote addresses (European Forum on Music — Equity in Music, 2024, 30th Klangspuren Festival opening, MA in Applied Human Rights graduation, European Forum Alpbach).

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