LEXINGTON, Mass. — Isabel Bayrakdarian, possessor of an exquisite soprano voice, performed a program called “Ancestral Songs, Prayers and Lullabies” at Lexington’s Scottish Rite Museum and Library on November 15. Talented musicians Ellie Choate on the harp, Rayo A. Furuta on the flute, and Mher Mnatsakanyan on the duduk joined her in the program, with drawings by Kevork Mourad projected on a screen to accompany the music.
Presented in three parts, without an intermission, the concert began with five songs that were Marian chants, hymns or children’s prayers. The rest of the program consisted of lullabies and songs by Gomidas Vartabed, and two of his students, Parsegh Ganatchian (1885-1967) and Mihran Toumajan (1890-1973), who continued the ethnomusicological work of Gomidas by preserving fragments of the dispersed musical heritage of the Armenian people. Among those who arranged the music for the program were Artur Avanesov, Ellie Choate and John Hodian.
Bayrakdarian evinced a strong emotional connection with these songs, particularly the lullabies which she said at the performance she used to sing to her own children many, many times until they grew up. The fact that she was named after her great-grandmother Zabel, who sang many of these songs to her children, and thus passed them down generation-to-generation till they reached Bayrakdarian, showed the latter, she writes in her program notes, how music bridges past and future and celebrates life and survival.
The poignant nature of the music and its context had a powerful effect on audience members, with at least several literally crying during the performance.
Taline Balikian introduced Bayrakdarian at the start of the program on behalf of the Friends of Armenian Culture Society (FACS), the local organizer of the concert, which has presented Armenian classical music in various forums to audiences in the Boston area over many decades.
Many of the selections performed are from Bayrakdarian’s album “Armenian Songs for Children” (2021).
