Skip links

Biography

Bahar Movahed is a board-certified orthodontist, caricaturist, and Persian classical vocalist. Bahar was raised in an environment which harmonized art and science; Her father is a nationally recognized surgeon and her mother is a well-known artist in Iran. Bahar was born in Tehran, Iran and started learning music as a young child first on the piano. Later on, she learned how to play the Tanbour through lessons with Maestro Seyed Amrollah Shah Ebrahimi. She quickly developed an interest for Kurdish lyrics and classical Persian vocal radifs. Simultaneously she learned to play Tar with Keyvan Saket and Mohamad Reza Ebrahimi and began intense vocal training in 1998 with the acclaimed classical Iranian singer Mrs. Parissa. During this period, Bahar was a dedicated dental student and went on to earn her DDS degree in Iran in 2003 from Tehran Azad School of Dentistry.

While practicing as a dentist, she continued studying vocals with renowned Iranian vocalists Shahram Nazeri and Hamid Reza Noorbakhsh, and eventually the legendary Mohammad Reza Shajarian. In her free time, she taught at a number of music institutes and recorded her own music before she left Iran.

Since women in Iran are only allowed to perform and produce music as “co-singing” vocalists to mask their own voice, Bahar was eager to present her art in the US as a solo vocalist. In 2010, Bahar immigrated to the United States to further her education and pursue professional opportunities.

In 2012, she released her debut album in collaboration with Maestro Ali Akbar Moradi, a well-known Iranian-Kurdish tanbour virtuoso. This album “Goblet of Eternal Light” was published by Traditional Crossroads and US media deemed it “one of the most hauntingly beautiful albums of the year in any style of music”. To date, Bahar has held multiple sold out concerts across the US.

Bahar continued her dental education in the US and earned her second DDS degree from the University of California, San Francisco. Soon after, she gained a specialty in Orthodontics and a MS in Kinesiology at the Arizona School of Dentistry and Oral Health. Bahar is currently practicing orthodontics in Southern California. While her career as an orthodontist brings her joy, her endless passion for Persian classical singing cannot be quenched. Her well-rounded background has given her media recognition as a “Renaissance Woman.