Jazz Piano Great Tigran Hamasyan to Tour US in Support of New Record

“The Bird of a Thousand Voices” is a multimedia project with many platforms including games, stories and a full theatrical production. The delicate drawings and visuals are all created by Khoren Matevosyan, an Armenia-based artist with a unique, delicate style of drawing.

“It’s an online game. The whole game is happening during one song. It’s the hero’s journey to find the bird and fight demons. It’s not an ultra-realistic game. It is not about that. It’s about creating an art piece. The story is a bedtime story. We wanted to create something in the medium where it can reach the younger generation. It is a huge project.”

The multimedia musical spectacle will be staged in Berlin, Belgium, Armenia and Los Angeles. A documentary film is also planned. In addition, Hamasyan is going to release a toy based on the story.

Inspirations from Near and Far

Hamasyan lives and breathes music and since childhood, has been immersed in varied, even clashing, genres of music.

“My father is a super rock fan. I grew up listening to Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath all day long. But at the same time my uncle was a jazz fan and I listened to Herbie Hancock and Miles Davis. At the same time, my grandparents owned a huge collection of classical music vinyls,” he said.

He recalled a funny story about his father Karapet’s love of heavy metal. “He literally would give up his month’s salary to get the new Led Zeppelin album from an underground source” during Soviet times, Hamasyan recalled. “He told me recently he just got the new Black Sabbath album in ’85 and he was in Gyumri and had a few drinks at the bar his friend was working at. They put it on in the bar and midway through the first song, two guys in a suit took him to the KGB [offices]. He is lucky that through some connections he got out. You can imagine the sacrifice!”

“Music itself inspires me to create. When I’m in the world of music, nothing else exists. I am going by musical rules and laws. The material world kind of disappears,” he said.

“In that way I am always searching musically,” he said. “I’m constantly listening to music. Everybody is influenced by everybody. It just depends on what we grew up with. I feel childhood experiences have huge impact on shaping our adult life.”

He said he loves recording and performing equally. “I like both. During recording sessions there is a little more pressure but musically good things happen because of that pressure,” he said.

All his influences come out during his performances. So while the songs are composed, he has built in room to play.

“It’s all written out but there is space where we improvise,” he said.

“But given the fact that I am just a musician, these tunes always end up changing. We are in the search for finding new things to develop the music. Also sometimes you get on the road and play the song. We naturally have an inclination to try this and that.”

Hamasyan was born in Gyumri and was just 1 ½ when the 1988 earthquake happened. “We moved to Yerevan right after that,” he said.

“My parents noticed I loved music more than anything else and they took me to a music school,” he said.

They had encyclopedia volumes which he went through and found medieval and renaissance painters and composers.

“I don’t know. Maybe it was supposed to be a sign for me to find them. Everything happens for a reason. Information I got, my life developed in that direction,” he said.

The music of Josquin de Prez, a French composer considered one of the greatest in the Renaissance era, who lived from 1477 to 1521 and who is considered part of the Flemish school, continues to inspire him.

“This was when Western polyphony was born in the School of Notre Dame,” he said.

Similarly important composers he considers equally influential are Léonin (c. 1135–1201) who laid the foundation for the Notre-Dame school of polyphony and Pérotin who worked at the Notre-Dame cathedral from around 1160 to 1250.

In addition to such diverse musical influences, he is inspired by cinematography and photography. He cited the images by directors Ingmar Bergman, Andrei Tarkovsky and Stanley Kubrick, as well as Russian abstract art pioneer Wassily Kandinsky and Swiss-German surrealist Paul Klee.

In Love with Folk Music

For Hamasyan, traditional Armenian folk music is a huge influence. “Folk music and folk arts to me are universal. It’s also the hardest thing to arrange, to touch, because it can sound very gimmicky or cliche all of a sudden. It takes years of devotion to this music to find something that you can do that people can just listen to without thinking this is Armenian or something,” he said.

He likes exposing non-Armenians to his country’s music, which he weaves through his jazz compositions. “Most of the time the feedback I get is people want to find out where this music comes form. There is a lot of wanting to learn more about Armenian music and Armenian arts,” he noted.

One constant in his life is the music of Norwegian jazz saxophonist Jan Garbarek, who has explored the music of Komitas, as well as classical music.

“I grew up listening to his [Garbarek’s] music. His music is the reason I discovered my musical roots in Armenian folk music. He is a huge inspiration,” he said. “His music inspired my music. He is one of those rare musicians. His music is part of my life, the soundtrack.”

Hamasyan said he would love the opportunity to collaborate with him one day.

Hamasyan has scored the soundtracks for a few movies and added he would like to do more, but “only for art cinema.”

“I want to write music for specific directors who are looking to create something for the sake of creating,” he explained.

Currently, he is in the process of recording a new album, as well as writing several pieces that have been commissioned to him.

While some families pass heirlooms down through the generations, in Hamasyan’s family, that treasure seems to be love for Led Zeppelin. His son, he said, is really into the band’s music now. Hamasyan said he would love to be able to meet front man Robert Plant and introduce him to his son.

Hamasyan’s tour will officially start in March, with dates in North America and Europe throughout the spring and summer. They will even go to South America and Asia.

“You really have to have discipline to stay sane and in a Zen mode. You are basically living out of your suitcase for weeks. It’s challenging for sure,” he said.

To see Hamasyan in Somerville, visit https://www.somervilletheatre.com/production/tigran-hamasyan/. To find out more about his latest record or to purchase it, visit https://www.tigranhamasyan.com/music-thebird.