Peyman Salimi

Peyman Salimi (Kermanshah, 18.07.1983) made his first steps in music at the age of six when he began to play the melodica. His uncle was inspirational to the young Peyman, who right from the early school days accompanied small school choirs with the keyboard.

It was in his teens that Peyman set his heart on the sound of the guitar which he still believes as the most mysterious thing he's ever met. Just like so many other guitar-toting young boys he listened to Django Reinherat, Chet Atkins, Andrès Segovia, Lonnie Johnson and Paco de Lucia.

He met the young guitarist and teacher Shervin when he was 16. Peyman was deeply encouraged by this new encounter to find his "musical vision" and a personal expression. They soon discovered to share a common musical ground and thus began to collaborate as a duo. Shervin was to have a profound effect on Peyman's guitar playing, introducing him to the intricate lead technique of Latin-flamenco guitarists and the subtle skills of jazz-Latin guitar, the elements of which Peyman was eventually to weave into his style of guitar picking.

It was in this period that he wrote his first song. "I was so excited ‘cause I never imagined myself as a songwriter. My only dream was to become a guitarist ". After High School he decided to pursue music seriously and enrolled on the course ‘Classical Guitar Performance’ at the Faculty of Fine Art of the University of Tehran, although his parents did not encourage his decision. "Only now I can make sense of what they were talking about, but sometimes it's not a question of having a choice!" says Peyman. He quit in the middle of the course and moved to Florence, Italy, and continued his classical guitar studies with Alfonso Borghese at the Conservatorio Luigi Cherubini.

Moving away from his native country led him to make his debut album "The Curtain" in which he expresses the many faces of immigration, core thematic of his lyrics. “I was born again! Songs like Ten Thousand Miles Away were my furious reaction to that shock and somehow I'm happy that it happened but the sad part is that you'll feel squeezed forever between two cultures”. The album has been recorded in the summer of 2008 at a little home studio in Florence.

He has no definition for his style "I love where the lines meet and cross each other. This album is just a little step ahead and obviously I need time to find my own tone". Peyman's also dedicating his potential as a composer to score 3D animations. Recently he's become a member of Shortcut Studio that is involved in 3D animation and special effects. He has discovered a different expressivity in these technologies, in which he finds the freedom and the courage to give voice to those ideas difficult to bring out in his songs.

He is currently continuing his master studies in Music and New Technology at the Conservatorio Luigi Cherubini. In the spring of 2008 he formed the Underpaid Man with his guitarist friend Andrea Deidda. "Playing at a low volume so that audience can converse is all we do. There’s no manager, no sponsor and no big gigs. We do small pubs".