A student concert memoir from the California leg of the Tale of Love tour — Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego, May 10, 1998 — days before Kavosh (San Francisco, May 16) and Kereshmeh / Sharh-e Eshq (Los Angeles, May 17).
The city of San Diego in southern California has a pleasant climate; its autumn is always more beautiful than its spring — drowned in flowers and green, shore and boat and wave, and the shine of eucalyptus; thousands of velvet hills give it a gracious beauty.
That evening Parissa sat on a bench on the stage, closed her eyes, and for the length of the program sank into her own world of contemplation — by her own word, into worship. She forgot us and the world and everything; she swayed her head gently and took a pleasure I am powerless to describe. She wore a long green dress and white shoes. At the dinner table afterward I asked what she was wearing; she said Turkmen — fine silk, and it resembled Baluchi dress.
They say this city has some forty-five thousand Iranians. It is not by chance that our artists include this place in their programs. If one percent of them bought tickets, there would be 4,500 listeners; at Parissa's concert fewer than that sat in the hall. Before her, other beloved figures of our country had come to San Diego — among them Shahram Nazeri and Mohammad-Reza Shajarian. On the tenth of May this year our dignified and renowned lady soothed our spirits with her soul-nourishing voice; her āvāz had not changed in the slightest. The nightingale-like *checheh* she executes in *shesh-dāng* was the same we had heard thirty years before.
When Parissa sings those literary jewels with care, precision, and skill, the effect is greater than that of someone who does not know the *radif*. Glad tidings, Iranian — the peerless artist and āvāz singer whose radiant voice destiny had seemed to silence is coming: Parissa comes to bring her voice, after eighteen years, to the soul-ears of compatriots thirsting for music.
Welcome to you, great lady of Iran's traditional āvāz.
— Sheyda, your student (Sharh-e Eshq)
Persian title . Preserved in a family press compilation; no independent online publication located. English rendering prepared from that transcription. The concert is independently attested on the 1998 North American tour (Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego) with Hossein Omoumi (ney), Pejman Hadadi (tombak), and Saam (daf). The writer's opener credits local organization in connection with prior Dastan-promoted San Diego appearances; the ensemble for this tour stop was the Omoumi trio.