A New York Evening With Rostam

The Grammy Museum is thrilled to welcome Grammy Award-winning artist Rostam to The Loreto Theater at The Sheen Center for Thought & Culture in New York City for a discussion about his new album, American Stories, his creative process, collaborations, and more, with a special live performance.

This event is part of the GRAMMY Museum’s New York City program series, which brings the Museum’s renowned education and public programs to the city. “A New York Evening With…” is generously supported by the Dawn and Brian Hoesterey Family Foundation. 

ABOUT ROSTAM

Rostam is a Grammy® Award-winning songwriter, producer, and composer. One of the founding members of Vampire Weekend and producer of their first three albums, he has been described as one of the great pop and indie-rock producers of his generation, having produced for some of the most important artists of the last decade including Frank Ocean, Clairo, Charli XCX, Maggie Rogers, HAIM, Solange, Lykke Li, Santigold, Carly Rae Jepsen, Hamilton Leithauser and many others. In recent years, he has maintained an astonishingly varied and intensely busy career, releasing three critically acclaimed solo albums—2017's Half-Light, 2020's Changephobia, and 2026’s American Stories—while also producing records for HAIM (2020's Women in Music Pt. III, nominated for Album of the Year at the 63rd GRAMMY® Awards and 2025's I quit, nominated for Best Rock Album at the 68th GRAMMY® Awards), Clairo (2019's Immunity), Vagabon (2023's Sorry I Haven't Called), Leith Ross (2025's I Can See the Future), and Georgia (2023's Euphoric), as well as composing for film and television, including 2016's The OA and 2023's The Persian Version.

His third studio album, American Stories is his most personal work to date, one that reflects his identity as both Iranian and American. Rostam built the album around that same duality, layering microtonal saz melodies against Western guitar chords. The result quilts together Americana and Persian music while the lyrics tell true stories from his own life, including "Hardy," a duet that reunites him with Clairo for the first time since he produced her debut. Its cover-the American flag presented upside down-stands, in Rostam's words, as "both a reclamation of the symbol and an acknowledgement that there is more to do, for all of us, as Americans." 

ABOUT AMERICAN STORIES

Fully exploring his Persian roots for the first time on a record, on American Stories Rostam quilts together elements of Americana and traditional Persian music. An accomplished multi-instrumentalist, Rostam’s vocals are complimented by his own playing across the album; on acoustic guitar and piano and, in places, drums and percussion. He brought in fellow Iranian-American Amir Yaghmai (The Voidz), whose contributions deepen and enrich the record’s Persian musical textures threaded throughout. These influences intertwine seamlessly with Rostam’s lyrics, which reflect on his lived experience as an American, creating a work that feels both deeply personal and intercultural.

Says Rostam of the album’s genesis, “At some point in making this record I realized the album I wanted to make was one that reflected my identity as both Iranian and American. Pushing the most Iranian elements right up against the most American ones brought me a certain kind of joy. The first time I put microtonal saz melodies over Western guitar chords, I was thrown off by the way the two rubbed together. But the more I listened the more I became drawn to that rub. I became addicted to it.”

He was also joined by a plethora of talented friends, including Clairo on vocals (for “Hardy”), Yaghmai on saz, violin and guitar, Daniel Aged on upright bass and pedal steel, Paul Cartwright on violin, Gabe Noel on cello and upright bass, Hamilton Berry on cello, Henry Solomon on flute and clarinet and Andrew Tachine and Joey Messina-Doerning on drums. American Stories was produced by Rostam - his 14th album credit as producer - and every track was mixed by mutli-Grammy winning mix engineer Tom Elmhirst and mastered by Grammy-winning mastering engineer Emily Lazar. With most of the songwriting credited to Rostam, there are a couple of co-writing appearances for Grammy-winning songwriter Tobias Jesso Jr. While it’s been five years since his last solo album, Rostam has been working consistently with other artists in that time frame, including earning GRAMMY nominations for his production work with Haim and producing for Georgia, Carly Rae Jepson, Santigold and Vagabon.