In a bustling marketplace in Iran, a traditional storyteller regales her audience with the tale of Prince Zal and the Simorgh. High up on the Mountain of Gems lives the Simorgh, a wise phoenix whose flapping wings disperse the seeds of life across the world. When King Sam commands that his long-awaited newborn son Zal be abandoned because of his white hair, the Simorgh adopts the baby and raises him alongside her own chicks and teaches him everything she knows. But when the king comes to regret his actions, Prince Zal will learn that the most important lesson of all is forgiveness. In this special edition, the story has been set to music, with each instrument representing a different character. You can download music composed by Amir Eslami (ney), Nilufar Habibian (qanun), Saeid Kord Mafi (santur), and Arash Moradi (tanbur). The music accompanies Sally Pomme Clayton’s stunning narration of this classic tale from the Shahnameh.

Sally Pomme Clayton is a pioneering storyteller and writer, who has published more than 10 children’s books. As author of The Phoenix of Persia, she has a long connection with the Iranian epic Shahnameh, haven written resource material about Shahnameh and storytelling in Iran for The British Library. She wrote the text ‘Prince Zal and the Simorgh’ based on Shahnameh for composer David Bruce and The London Philharmonic Orchestra (2012), which she performed with the orchestra at The Royal Festival Hall as well as delivering workshops for schools.Amin Hassanzadeh Sharif was born in Tehran in 1979 and is an award-winning illustrator whose work has been published worldwide. Amin will illustrate The Phoenix of Persia using his distinctive ‘sgraffito’ technique (from the Italian word sgraffire which means “to scratch”). His workshops with children explore this technique which involves scratching through a layer of still-wet paint to reveal what’s underneath. His work is influenced by centuries of artistic representations of Ferdowsi’s epic Shahnameh, from exquisitely detailed Persian miniatures to contemporary illustrations. He currently resides in California.