The award-winning Israeli-Persian singer returns with "Roya"

(fantasy in Farsi) an exhilarating blend of tradi-modern rhythms

and retro-Persian sonics. Recorded in secrecy in Istanbul with

her band from Tel Aviv and risk-defying Iranian musicians from

Tehran. A musical portal to a place of peace, joy and unfettered

freedom. The new third album from award-winning Israeli-

Persian singer Liraz is an invitation to dream. Anthems, love

ballads, glittery Middle Eastern dance tunes ... A collection of 11

tracks that enrich that signature blend of tradi-modern rhythms

and retro-Persian sonics, Roya ("fantasy" in Farsi) is music as a

magic portal, an arched gateway to a place of peace, joy and

unfettered, chador-waving freedom. Liraz and her Israeli sextet

(three women, three men) recorded Roya over ten days in

Istanbul, in a basement studio hidden from public view and

crackling with creativity. With them, on violin, viola and the tar,

the wasp-waisted wooden Iranian lute, were composers and

musicians from the Iranian capital, Tehran. The same clutch of

anonymous players who previously collaborated with Liraz

online, no questions asked, no faces shown, under the radar of

Tehran"s secret police, for her feted 2020 album, Zan. Players

who"d travelled undercover from Tehran to Istanbul to work

with Liraz and producer/multi- instrumentalist Uri Brauner Kinrot

in the flesh. "There is a passage connecting our tongue and

heart, sustaining the secrets of the world and soul," wrote Rumi,

the greatest Sufi mystic and poet in the Persian language,

whose prose Liraz treasures. "As long as our tongue is locked

the channel is open/the moment our tongue unlocks the

passage will close."

Welt