About Tara Tiba

Praised as a unique new voice from Iran, ARIA award nominee Tara Tiba is noted as one of Australia’s most distinctive and significant musical voices.

Born in Iran and based in Perth, Western Australia, Tara Tiba is one of the few singers of her generation who has mastered the Persian classical canonic repertoire, Radif. She has been acclaimed as an expatriate trailblazer for her extraordinary vocal technique and repertoire that fuses traditional Persian singing with Jazz, Latin, contemporary and experimental music.

Tara Tiba was Born in 1984 in Tehran, where women are prohibited from singing in public as part of the post revolution constitution since 1979. She graduated as an architect, however from an early age she followed her musical heart by studying classical piano. In her teenage years, Tara took an interest in traditional Persian music which lead her to study the singing style of Radif, privately with prominent Iranian vocalist Maestro Hengameh Akhavan who has since been forced to retire after the revolution only in her prime years of singing career.

Radif is an age-old oral transmission from master to student that accesses the deep cultural tradition of Iran's improvised music. Improvisation in Persian music is traditionally done in distinct modes(Dastgah) which include quarter tones. Poetry is also central to Iranian classical music and vocal sections are usually set to the poetry of medieval mystic poets such as Baba Taher (11th Century A.D.),  Rumi and Saadi  (13th Century A.D.) as well as to the work of contemporary poets.

"Having the opportunity to learn from Hengameh Akhavan has been a great privilege and honour for me" Says Tiba.

Determined to perform in public, Tara Tiba moved to Perth in 2012.

"At 3.00 am with a suitcase in my hand, suddenly I found myself 10,000 km far from anyone I knew. From one of the most culturally isolated countries, I landed in one of the most geographically isolated cities in the world!"

A year later, studying jazz at the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts, Tara Tiba formed her own band and performed on stage for the first time. With her dream finally coming true, in 2014 she released her debut album, A Persian Dream. 

Hailed for her spine-tingling voice by Australia's national paper, The Australian, Tara has since mesmerised audiences around the world including at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art's Norouz at The MET GALA, National Auditorium of Music of Spain, BBVA Tivoli Portugal, WOMADelaide festival and many more.

Tara Tiba performed for 50,000 people at the 2016 Perth Festival opening event, directed by Nigel Jamieson and alongside Tim Minchin and West Australian Youth Symphony Orchestra conducted by Iain Grandage. For the 2018 Perth Festival event Siren Song,Tiba's singing was broadcast from an installation of 500 speakers on skyscrapers at dawn and dusk for 10 days across her adopted city.

"I come from a place and a time that not only the female voice was suddenly forbidden, but also listening or performing music in general, in some cases even carrying an instrument, was considered as a criminal act....we all know that the love for music transcends it all!" Says Tiba

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In 2019 Tiba released her long-awaited second album OMID(Hope), for which she received a five star review in The Australian and nominations for ARIA awards for Best World album, WAM Best World act and won the WAM song of the year 2019.

The new album features Cuban Grammy award nominee pianist-composer Ivan Melon Lewis as producer and some of the finest Cuban and Iranian musicians. OMID is a playful exploration of the musical traditions shared by Iran and Cuba after the Spanish took Middle Eastern soul to Latin America. 

Tara is dedicating this album to all the people dealing with mental health.

"Omid means Hope. As the nature of any journey is uncertainty, hope is the starting point to do magic"