Cultural Horizons of Armenians

[Siamanto]

Re: Cultural Horizons of Armenians

BIDS FOR OVER 100 TALES ALREADY RECEIVED FOR CONTEST OF TRUE LOVE
STORIES ON OCCASION OF SURB SARGIS HOLIDAY

YEREVAN, JANUARY 15, NOYAN TAPAN. On the occasion of Holiday of Surb
Sargis, the intercessor for young people and love, on January 21, the
Ararat patriarchal diocese has announced a contest of true love stories
on three subjects - "Surb Sargis, the Intercessor for Our Love", "Surb
Sargis, the Intercessor for Our Strong Family" and "Surb Sargis -
Strong Family, Strong Homeland". NT correspondent was informed by the
press service of the Ararat patriarchal diocese that bids for over 100
tales and love stories have already been received. The organizers will
read them carefully and then choose the best works. Monetary prizes are
envisaged for the best works on the 3 above mentioned sujects in the
amount of 150, 100 and 50 thousand drams. The best stories will be
published in "Shoghakn Araratian" official newspaper of the Ararat
patriarchal diocese.

In addition to the contest of true love stories and tales, the Ararat
patriarchal diocese has organized painting and photo contests on the
same subjects, with monetary prizes being instituted. The deadline for
submitting bids is January 17.

The festivities on the occasion of Holiday of Surb Sargis will finish
by a grand concert to be given at A. Spendiarian National Academic
Theatre of Opera and Ballet on January 21. An exhibition-sale of the
best 20 works of the painting and photo contests will be held at the
theatre lobby two hours prior to the concert. At the conclusion of the
concert, the names of the contest winners will be announced and they
will be handed monetary prizes and awards symbolizing the holiday.

http://groong.usc.edu/news/msg217030.html

[Siamanto]

Re: Cultural Horizons of Armenians

A Musical Mosaic

ARMENIAN MUSICIANS SHOWCASE THEIR EVOLUTION OF STYLES, FROM TRADITIONAL TO ROCK TO JAZZ, DURING ALEX THEATRE CONCERT
By Ani Amirkhanian

Glendale News Press
Jan 24 2008
CA


An upcoming concert will showcase the evolution of Armenian music by
combining traditional with contemporary sounds and provide a platform
for up-and-coming young musicians, organizers said.

This year, the lineup for Mosaic II Concert ranges from rock and jazz
to Armenian folk music, said Lori Tatoulian, artistic coordinator of
the Hamazkayin Armenian Educational and Cultural Society. "Basically,
we are bringing different styles of music to form the current picture
of young Armenian musicians in Los Angeles and the United States,"
she said. "It brings in music that is not just one style. It shows
the evolution of Armenian music, infused with current trends and
current interpretations of melodies."

After last year's sold-out show in January, the Hamazkayin Mosaic
planning committee decided to have the concert again, with new
performers joining veteran musicians.

One of the returning groups to hit the stage Saturday is Visa,
a nine-piece ensemble that combines Armenian, Greek and Latin rhythms.

The ensemble has been around for about seven years, and members
are all from different ethnic backgrounds, said K'noup Tomopoulos,
vocalist and guitarist.

"Visa is the audio passport for music for the simple reason that we
are all from different corners of the world," he said.

Tomopoulos, a native of Greece and a Glendale resident, grew up
listening to Greek music, but the music of Visa reflects themes that
span across cultures.

"Our songs are about life, romance, heartache, joy, tragedy, things
that every person goes through in life," he said. advertisement

Visa's musicians play the drums, guitar, congas, duduk, a traditional
Armenian woodwind instrument, and the Middle Eastern dombag, or drum.

"We are a mix from all over the world," Tomopoulos said. "It pushes
the envelope to be able to experiment with a mix of styles."

The concert will showcase performers who are making their debut in
the community, Tatoulian said, adding that the goal is to present a
platform to encourage the musicians to continue what they are doing.

Cantus Capella, a progressive rock band, is set to perform for the
first time at the Alex Theatre.

The band has been together since February, bassist Armen Hovsepian
said.

"We are very melodic and heavy at the same time," he said. "I can't
say it's for an older crowd."

Cantus Capella fans range in ages from 16 to 26, Hovsepian said.

Their music is a fusion of rock and ethnic blends and is open to
interpretation.

"It's mainly mainstream rock, but we haven't worked Armenian song
angles into it yet," Hovsepian said. "One of the most characteristic
qualities is the vocal range. It's a high register for the male voice,
which makes the melody stand out. The music is very bass-driven."

Cantus Capella is the only rock band scheduled to play Saturday.

"We feel very proud to be able to play in an Armenian cultural event,"
Hovsepian said.

"We have such a diverse sound that it might push some buttons or
raise some eyebrows."

For Glendale resident Sonya Varoujian, Saturday's concert is also
the first time she will take the stage at the Alex Theatre.

Varoujian will perform a selection of her original songs. She will
sing five songs in Armenian and one in English.

"I would say the songs are more in the line of traditional,"
Varoujian said.

"It's not the same songs regurgitated in a different style. It's
new lyrics."

Varoujian's songs are a reflection of herself, she said.

"I would say it's exactly a product of who I am," she said. "I am
an Armenian who grew up in England and New York with a traditional
Armenian upbringing. The songs are about love and in all its forms.

They are very personal."

The concert will also showcase the music of Zulal, an Armenian a
cappella folk trio, and Ochion and Areni, a duo who will perform
contemporary classical music, jazz, free jazz and Armenian music.

http://www.glendalenewspress.com/articles/2008/01/23/entertainment/gnp-mosaic23.txt

[Siamanto]

Re: Cultural Horizons of Armenians

SOPRANO'S ETHNICITY GIVES HER ROOTS FROM WHICH TO GROW AN EXOTIC SOUND
By Paul Horsley

Kansas City Star

http://www.kansascity.com/entertainment/story/457270.html

Jan 24 2008
MO

Isabel Bayrakdarian is not just a globe-trotting soprano, she's an
Armenian-Canadian and proud of it.

Her ethnic background is important enough to her that she mentions
it in her official bio. Because, she said, it's an essential part of
understanding who she is as an artist and a person.

"My identity makes me feel unique because I can express and approach
music having had a completely different database of emotions and
experiences," said the Lebanese-born soprano, who immigrated with
her family to Canada at age 14.

"For about 2,000 years, our identity and our culture has been defined
by the duality of keeping our language alive and keeping our faith
alive. The Armenian language is unique: There is no other language
that you can say it's related to."

As a result, even when she sings Mozart - as she did last season
in the Metropolitan Opera's "The Magic Flute" - you should hear the
difference "because the approach or the sensitivity to a phrase is
instinctively different."

Critics and audiences have certainly heard the difference, and she's
now one of the most sought-after lyric sopranos among us. On Saturday
at the Folly Theater, she joins a long line of great opera stars who
have sung recitals on the Harriman-xxxell Series.

She'll be accompanied by her husband, New York-born composer and
pianist John Musto.

But there are other sides to the 30-something Bayrakdarian
(ba-rok-DAH-rian) than opera, most notably her interest in Armenian
folk and sacred music.

She first sought vocal training, in fact, so that she could be a better
singer in the Armenian church. The style of singing there is free and
flowing, almost cantorial, she said, with "gorgeous, soaring lines."

Perfect preparation, as it turned out, for a future opera singer. But
that was the last thing on her mind at the time. Things began to take
off during her college years, but her voice teacher still urged her
to have a backup plan.

She got a degree in biomedical engineering.

You mean, like, cloning?

"Yes, that's right," she said with a laugh. So far she hasn't had to
use her degree to support herself, but having it gives her a freedom
that she enjoys.

"You can't imagine the times I've had the courage to say no to a role
because in my mind I had the confidence that I always had something
to fall back on. Mimi (in 'La Boheme') at 22 was not good for my
voice. It was empowering that I had something else."

Some of Bayrakdarian's other sidelines are as interesting as her
opera career. It was her CD of Armenian hymns, "Joyous Light," that
captured the ear of Hollywood composer Howard Shore, who immediately
wanted to find out who she was.

"This is the voice I've been looking for," Shore said and sought
her out for the score of "The Two Towers," the second "Lord of the
Rings" film.

The silvery purity of Bayrakdarian's voice makes the haunting song
"Evenstar" one of the score's highlights.

Involvement with the film has brought the singer into contact with a
whole new audience, a phenomenon that was repeated when she sang on
a Grammy-nominated track for the electronica group Delerium.

"I still get fan mail from people who've never, ever been exposed to
opera," she said.

People see her name on Shore's soundtrack or on Delerium's "Nuages
du Monde." They Google it, follow the link to her Web site,
bayrakdarian.com, and then listen to the sample tracks.

[Siamanto]

Re: Cultural Horizons of Armenians

Critics' Forum
Visual Arts: Art in the Time of Change: Contemporary Art in Armenia

By Tamar Sinanian and Taleen Tertzakian

http://www.criticsforum.org

In order to understand where art in the now independent Armenian
republic is going, we need to look back at where it has been,
especially since the fateful days of independence in 1991.

The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 instigated change not only
in the economic, political, and military spheres of the former
republics but in the everyday freedoms of its people. The sister
policies of Glasnost and Perestroika, established in the late 1980s
by Gorbachev in his feeble efforts to save the Soviet structure,
ultimately resulted in the beginning of the end of the Soviet era.
Glasnost (meaning "openness") promoted a spirit of intellectual and
cultural openness which encouraged public debate and participation in
support of the program of Perestroika (or, "economic restructuring").

By promoting an exchange of ideas and information, a concept long
foreign to that area of the world, Glasnost allowed the introduction
of the western tenet of freedom of speech. Soviet citizens began to
artistically and journalistically express themselves in ways that for
years had been forbidden by the Soviet regime. The introduction of
such "anti-soviet" concepts, and the resulting relaxation of
censorship, eventually lead to the Communist Party losing its grip on
the media and ultimately to the dismantling of the tight soviet
structure that had been in place for the past 75 years. Each of the
former soviet republics reacted differently to this loosening of
control and in their own way contributed to the eventual fall of the
system.

Armenia proved to be one of the more vociferous republics, as its
citizens took full advantage of the changing political and social
atmosphere. In 1988, soviet tanks firmly planted themselves in
Yerevan's city center, the then "Lenin Square", in response to
demonstrations against soviet policies, including religious,
environmental, and political issues. People took to the streets in
demonstration and some camped out in front of the Opera House,
bringing attention to their cause by organizing a hunger strike.

While this political and social chaos kept escalating on the streets
of Yerevan, artists were in their studios recreating their art to
reflect the times and documenting the birth of a new era. At this
time, a small group of these artists organized a number of exhibits
called "Third Floor," named after the floor in the Artists Union
where they would exhibit. At Third Floor, artists experimented with
different art forms and techniques, fomenting change while
foreshadowing the creative freedom to come.

The abundance of artistic styles that emerged in Armenia during this
tumultuous time of rapid transition revealed the anticipated need of
release the art community was struggling with. This post-
collapse "fresh breath" was a long time in coming. Artists in Armenia
stripped themselves of the constraints placed on them by the state-
imposed genre of Socialist Realism, a style of representational art
that furthered the goals of socialism and communism, and began
exploring other techniques and forms of expression. No longer did
artists need to restrict their subject matter and purpose when
creating art.

This new-found freedom resulted in artists casting aside the stale,
contrived images of tractors, workers, and other proletariat models
of socialist realist art for newly discovered inspirations, forms and
techniques as artists were finally allowed to openly learn, study,
and discover western art. The abstract and modern schools of thought,
which had streamed out of 1950s and 60s New York (abstract
expressionism followed by pop art) and had taken the rest of the art
world by storm became more accessible and tangible to these artists.
They began studying Rauschenberg, Rothko, Warhol, and their American
peers as well as various members of Germany's 1980s neo-expressionist
movement. The influence of these various schools of thought in
correlation with the social and historical context surrounding the
artists created a new perspective - and ultimately a new school of
Armenian Art.

The dichotomy of pre- and post-soviet influence is very much apparent
in the art work of many of the artists who have established present-
day Armenia's contemporary art scene, including Yerevan-based Arthur
Sarkissian. Like many of his contemporaries, during the 1980s,
Sarkissian steered away from Socialist Realism and began
experimenting with abstraction. During an interview in 2005,
Sarkissian suggested, "my approach to painting developed from the
desire to free myself from Socialist Realism. Abstract thought was
the means of free expression. I have never given up and always
experimented. So, now there are no boundaries for me; I create freely
and at any desired moment I can return to abstract art, or
incorporate several styles."

This notion of freedom that Sarkissian yearned for in his desire to
depart from the restrictive principles of Socialist Realism can be
seen in his style and technique. Often compared to one of his great
influences, American artist Robert Rauschenberg, Sarkissian's collage-
like method of painting juxtaposes silkscreen images on a canvas with
painterly gestures. In his work, Sarkissian incorporates signs,
texts, manuscripts, photographs, interiors and exteriors of different
architectural structures, as well as images of Renaissance and
Baroque art. The spontaneous placement of these images on canvas
along with expressionist brushstrokes demonstrates the freedom of
expression he enjoys in making his art today.

In present-day Armenia, artists, such as Sarkissian, experiment with
their various inspirations, moods, philosophies, and perspectives,
without having to pay homage to any ideological dogma. Sarkissian
takes this freedom and runs with it. And the western world is taking
notice. In a review of Sarkissian's work, Peter Frank, an art critic
for LA Weekly has written: "Just as he can transit from manual
gesture to photographic document, his imagery can fluctuate in mood
from lighthearted and sweet to ominous and grave, from fluid and
beautiful to stark and coarse. The shifts between tonalities can be
more dramatic than the tonalities themselves."

Like Sarkissian, many artists in Yerevan have embraced the creative
freedom of Armenia's new era and are collectively changing the
historico-cultural discourse of Armenia's contemporary art scene.
With such an auspicious beginning, we cannot wait to see where the
artists, and their art, will take us.


All Rights Reserved: Critics' Forum, 2008

Tamar Sinanian holds a Master's degree in Contemporary Art from
Sothebys Institute in London. She is also the co-founder of T&T Art,
an art consulting company.

Taleen Tertzakian is an attorney and holds a Master's degree in
Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies from Stanford
University. She is also the co-founder of T&T Art, an art consulting
company.

You can reach them or any of the other contributors to Critics' Forum
at [email protected]. This and all other articles published
in this series are available online at http://www.criticsforum.org. To sign
up for a weekly electronic version of new articles, go to
http://www.criticsforum.org/join. Critics' Forum is a group created to
discuss issues relating to Armenian art and culture in the Diaspora.

http://www.criticsforum.org/pdf/1201970293.pdf

[Siamanto]

Re: Cultural Horizons of Armenians

THE CRITICALLY-ACCLAIMED DOCUMENTARY AND WINNER OF THE AUDIENCE
Weber Shandwick Maral Kaloustian, [email protected]

PR-Inside.com (Pressemitteilung)
Feb 12 2008
Austria

MG2 Productions in association with BBC Television and The
Raffy Manoukian Charity present SCREAMERS, taking center stage
on DVD February 19, 2008 from Sony BMG Entertainment. Directed
by award-winning journalist and filmmaker, Carla Garapedian, this
gripping documentary traces the history of modern-day genocide and
genocide denial -- from the Ottoman Empire at the start of the 20th
century, to the current genocide in Darfur.

Follow the multi-platinum album selling and Grammy-Award(R)-winning(a)
band, System of a Down as they raise awareness for human rights
atrocities that continue to plague the world today.

"(An) invigorating and articulate film (that) unfolds at the
sensitive intersection of entertainment and politics," said Jeannette
Catsoulis, New York Times, during its theatrical release in the United
States. Also the winner of the Audience Award at the AFI Film Festival
and the Audience Award at the Montreal Human Rights Festival, SCREAMERS
is truly a must see. This shattering and powerful DVD includes seven
never-before-released concert and behind-the-scenes footage of the
band on tour. "A brilliant film," says Larry King of CNN, that asks
the audience, as well as all people, to be "screamers" and to speak
out against injustice.

"Genocides, we should feel, are all one," said Serj Tankian, lead
singer of System of a Down. "I think this is an important film. It's
not just about System, it is about the denial of genocide, the common
denominator of all genocides, how they get away with it. It is about
the hypocrisy of denial."

A similar sentiment is shared by the film's director:

"The band's music is the perfect vehicle to make people wake up and
take action to end the cycle of genocide," said Carla Garapedian.

"SCREAMERS busts wide-open the hypocrisy of politicians and governments
who have misleadingly vowed 'never again.' This film reminds us that
we, as individuals, can make a difference. We can, as Serj says,
all be screamers."

A chilling segment in the film features an exclusive interview with one
such 'screamer,' journalist and activist, Hrant Dink. Brutally killed
shortly after the film's premiere for speaking out for recognition
of the Armenian Genocide, Hrant Dink spent the majority of his life
fighting the government of Turkey's ongoing denial of the Genocide.

Synopsis

Multi-platinum, Grammy-Award winning band, System Of A Down,
lend their music to this critically acclaimed political movie--
an impassioned synthesis of concert film and hard-hitting expose
about genocide in the last century-- from the Armenian genocide,
the first genocide of the 20th century, to the genocide now in
Darfur. The film includes commentary and interviews with Pulitzer
prize-winning author Samantha Power ("A Problem from Hell: America
and the Age of Genocide"), survivors from Turkey, Rwanda and Darfur,
FBI whistleblowers, and the recently assassinated Hrant Dink, who all
shed light on why genocides occur and how they are permitted to repeat.

Screamers was conceived by Peter McAlevey and Carla Garapedian and
produced by Nick de Grunwald, Tim Swain, Carla Garapedian and Peter
McAlevey.

DVD Extras

The Screamers DVD will include the following, never-before seen
special features:

-- "Going Backstage"- Fan meets the band backstage

-- "Armenian School"- Teachers remember Serj, Daron and Shavo at school

-- "Where Did We Come from?"- Serj and John pinpoint exactly where
their families came from

-- "Grandfather's Village"- Serj's grandfather's village in Turkey
today

-- Bonus Song- "Question!"

-- Never-before seen concert footage

-- Hrant Dink in Memoriam- Exclusive interview with Hrant Dink
in Istanbul

-- Press Conference - Serj and John at Screamers's Premiere press
conference

-- "Spiral into Flames"- Glass artist at work creating genocide
commemorative symbol

-- Get Connected -Director tells you how to find out more

-- Trailer - Screamers theatrical trailer

SCREAMERS -0- Street Date: February 19, 2008 Pricing: $19.99 SRP
Runtime: 91 minutes U.S. Rating: R for language, and disturbing images
of genocide

(a) Best Hard Rock Performance, 2005 for "B.Y.O.B"

Debuts on DVD February 19, 2008

Special Features Include Going Backstage, Bonus Song, and Press
Conference

"Surprising gravitas" -- Entertainment Weekly

"Eye-Opening" -- LA Times

"Genius" -- Village Voice

http://www.reuters.com/article/pressRelease/idUS132066+12-Feb-2008+BW20080212

[Siamanto]

Re: Cultural Horizons of Armenians

Part 1 of 2

The Weekly Standard
February 25, 2008 Monday


Saroyan Turns 100; The writer who asked, What does it mean to be alive?

Ann Stapleton, The Weekly Standard

BOOKS & ARTS Vol. 13 No. 23


"I? do not know what makes a writer, but it is probably not
happiness," wrote the Fresno-born Armenian-American author and
playwright William Saroyan, who died in 1981.

His father, a failed poet, died of appendicitis when Saroyan was
barely three years old. His mother put her four children into
Oakland's Fred Finch Orphanage and took on work as a domestic, hoping
to reunite the family one day. She would eventually succeed, but the
process would take five years. Meanwhile, Saroyan was consigned to
the small boys' ward, where he fell asleep every night to the sounds
of bereft boys rocking themselves and weeping.

As Saroyan's son Aram noted in Last Rites, about his difficult
relationship with his father, whereas most of us come to a first
perception of the world with a mother and father acting as a buffer
between ourselves and death, Saroyan's "own link hooked up at the
very moment of the dawning of his rational consciousness not with
father, or mother--but with Death itself." He was "hooked into the
abyss at both ends."

Afflicted with the lifelong emotional effects of his childhood
experiences, and an acute anti-authority complex, Saroyan often found
the intricacies of human relationships painful and mystifying.
According to John Leggett, the biographical author of A Daring Young
Man, it was the "Saroyan social paradox, that he could fill a room
with bonhomie, but people were no more real to him than characters in
a dream."

He quarreled with or disappointed almost everyone who ever tried to
befriend him, including Random House's Bennett Cerf, MGM's Louis B.
Mayer, and Darryl F. Zanuck, founder of Twentieth Century Fox. He
told Lillian Hellman that her plays could use some songs to liven
them up, and then proceeded to sing her some possibilities. James
Mason once slapped him for talking nonstop at a premiere. And in a
retaliatory piece for Esquire, Ernest Hemingway, annoyed over a short
story that seemed to mock his work, told Saroyan he wasn't "that
bright" and that he should "watch" himself.

"Do I make myself clear," he added, "or would you like me to push
your puss in?"

Even Saroyan's lifelong best friend, his cousin Ross Bagdasarian,
became suspect. While on a boisterous cross-country road trip in a
new Buick paid for with money from Saroyan's first Broadway success,
the two of them put lyrics to old Armenian folk tunes and came up
with the song "Come On-A My House (I'm Gonna Give You Candy)," which
would become a hit for Rosemary Clooney. But Saroyan, saddled in
later years with heavy gambling debts, found it impossible to forgive
Bagdasarian's only crime: becoming set for life by creating the
novelty recording act, The Chipmunks.

Saroyan was unhappily married, once for six years and a second time
for a disastrous six months, to the sweet-spirited blonde socialite
Carol Marcus, the inspiration for Holly Golightly in her childhood
friend Truman Capote's Breakfast at Tiffany's, lifelong friend to
Gloria Vanderbilt and Oona O'Neill, and whose letters from beau
"Jerry" (J.D. Salinger, as it turned out) Carol once plagiarized in
an attempt to write entertainingly to Saroyan. Courted by Orson
Welles, Mel Ferrer, Clifford Odets, Al Capp, and Marlon Brando, among
others, she eventually settled into a marriage of over 40 years'
duration with Walter Matthau, but Saroyan continued to rave about her
and love her from a distance until death intervened.

A self-described "estranged man" ("I am little comfort to myself,
though I am the only comfort I have"), Saroyan lost touch with his
children Aram and Lucy--though when they learned of his final
illness, they effected a tender reconciliation. But if temperament
and early loss conspired to deprive Saroyan of a fulfilling personal
life, in his writing he was determined, like his character who
planted pomegranate trees in the desert, "to make a garden of this
awful desolation."

Saroyan was a writing machine and fearless genre-hopper, achieving
major successes in the short story (The Daring Young Man on the
Flying Trapeze), the novel (The Human Comedy and My Name Is Aram, the
Armenian-American Huck Finn), and the autobiography (The Bicycle
Rider in Beverly Hills, Not Dying, and others). And alongside Eugene
O'Neill and Thornton Wilder he helped to found a truly American
theater, with My Heart's in the Highlands and The Time of Your
Life--for which he declined the Pulitzer Prize, on the grounds that
institutions and the arts don't mix.

Prizing spontaneity and distrustful of too much revision, he wrote
swiftly: two stories in a day, a play in one week, and once, three
books in a month. The man who could consume an entire watermelon at
one sitting lived to write, and wrote voraciously, "to save [his]
life." He wanted to learn to write the way the snow was falling on
the streets of New York, "the finest style" he'd ever seen, and the
best of his work comes closer than the efforts of any other American
writer to evoking the strange improvisational genius, the exuberance
and despair, at the heart of an ordinary, lived life on earth.

In Obituaries, the last book he published in his lifetime, Saroyan
expresses fascination with "a strange man in New York in the late
thirties who at the opening of the opera season would go into the
lobby with all of the rich and social people and suddenly stand on
his head while the cameras flashed." The next day the newspapers
would show the man, a kind of innocent who appeared to have no profit
motive for his behavior, "standing on his head surrounded by
astonished dowagers and dandies." Saroyan is very much the
headstand-man of American letters, reminding us to discard the
dark-suited formalities that deaden our responses to the world and
invite the life force in.

"I am not afraid to make a fool of myself," Saroyan insisted, and
this headlong audacity shows itself not only in his
ahead-of-their-time, tenderly ranting, dark-adapted experimental
stories, but also in his daredevil choice of subjects familiarly
symbolic and emotion-laden and dear to the human imagination, and
then breaking the seal of our accustomed blindness to expose the
original depth and eccentricity, the brief, strong flash of light,
beneath.

A case in point is his short story "The Hummingbird That Lived
Through Winter," in which an elderly blind man and a young boy
revive, with a teaspoonful of warmed honey, an ailing hummingbird
trapped in the wrong season. The tale is life-affirming, yes, but
only in a narrowly qualified way that depends heavily for its impact
on the hovering presence of death. Like the unnerving background
sound of the demolition crew coming closer and closer in his play The
Cave Dwellers, in Saroyan, the knowledge that things end is never
very far away.

The two figures and the tiny flicker of intensity that is the
hummingbird are made present to us for only a moment within a minor
bubble of daylight poised against the blackness of eternity. It is
winter to which the bird must return. The man is aged and mortal. And
the boy, too, must choose to act blindly, without ever knowing
whether his love will save anything at all.

Yet life relentlessly presents itself to us, here in the form of
"this wonderful little creature of the summertime," dying "in the big
rough hand of the old peasant" who, in his blindness, must ask the
boy just learning to discern the world, "What is this in my hand?" As
we, too, look down into the tender but only temporary nest the old
man's palm makes of itself in the air, Saroyan forces us to see the
imperiled being there, "not suspended in a shaft of summer light,"
and "not the most alive thing in the world" anymore, but "the most
helpless and heartbreaking."

In the wild throbbing of this smallest heart, we can feel our own
pulse beat, and by extension, the whole world's. What is this thing
called life? How can it possibly be? And knowing it will someday
perish, what do we do with it now? Despite all our helplessness, so
much of the world is left up to us. A terrifying responsibility, in
its way, about which Saroyan is wholly unsentimental, yet wholly
encouraging: We must live.

When the boy later asks the old man whether their hummingbird
survived the winter, his answer is the only one he can give: That the
hummingbirds the boy watches in the summer air are the one they
saved.

"Each of them is our bird. Each of them, each of them," he said
swiftly and gently.

In "Why I Write," Saroyan clearly lays out this notion of
immortality: "One of a kind couldn't stay, and couldn't apparently be
made to." But "something did stay, something was constant, or
appeared to be. It was the kind that stayed." For Saroyan, the only
thing that can "halt the action" of our disappearance is art, "the
putting of limits upon the limitless, and thereby holding something
fast and making it seem constant, indestructible, unstoppable,
unkillable, deathless." By abetting the escape of the hummingbird
into the imagination of the reader, Saroyan wins the little
hand-to-hand combat with death which is this story. He knew that we
need such victories to help us bear our lives.

The Swiss critic Henri-Frédéric Amiel wrote that dreams are a
"semi-deliverance from the human prison," a concept Saroyan takes as
a given. In The Time of Your Life, he describes the character Joe as
actually "holding the dream," not a sentimentality at all, but a tip
of the hat to the iron reality of our inner lives.

Harry the Hoofer, played by the young Gene Kelly on Broadway, sees
that "the world is sorrowful" and "needs laughter," which he dreams
of providing by means of his awkward, decidedly unfunny, desperate
dance that never stops. The sad clown Harry, whose "pants are a
little too large," whose coat is "loose" and "doesn't match," is the
perfect type of modern man:

He comes in timidly, turning about uncertainly, awkward, out of place
everywhere, embarrassed and encumbered by the contemporary costume,
sick at heart, but determined to fit in somewhere. His arrival
constitutes a dance.

Harry fails to make the world laugh; his dream goes unrealized. Yet
his blundering movements make the audience want to weep in
recognition of their own inelegant lives, their own ungraceful
losses. The vividness of their own dreams makes Harry real.

When Saroyan's mother left him at the orphanage, she distracted him
with a little windup toy, a dancing black minstrel that made him stop
crying. Years after he wrote The Time of Your Life, Saroyan would
realize that Harry the Hoofer was that toy brought to life. It is the
genius of Saroyan that the sight of Harry dancing, the very image of
ceaseless exuberance, evokes pity and grief in the onlooker, that the
very thing meant to stop our crying is what allows us to weep for
ourselves and for each other, for the thing we have lost forever and
for all we will never find.

Don't Go Away Mad, dedicated to his son Aram and infused with the
grief and rage of Saroyan's divorce and the loss of his children, is
an excruciatingly dark, inverted morality play about hospital
patients waiting to die, reading a dictionary aloud as their
collective last act, and as Saroyan must have been at the time of his
writing, desperately trying to wring some meaning and hope from the
words.
.......

http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G1-175050976.html

[Siamanto]

Re: Cultural Horizons of Armenians

Part 2 of 2


The Weekly Standard
February 25, 2008 Monday


Saroyan Turns 100; The writer who asked, What does it mean to be alive?

Ann Stapleton, The Weekly Standard

BOOKS & ARTS Vol. 13 No. 23

...................
This is the statement of a realist. The sun does shine: not every
hour, not even every day, but often enough. The most cynical of men
looks upon his own child's face and is changed by what it believes of
him. A middle-aged couple kisses, surprised to find themselves, after
so many years, in love. Someone somewhere peers into the abyss and
roars with laughter. Life goes on. And Saroyan the headstand-man
reminds us to "try as much as possible to be wholly alive, with all
[our] might," for the simple reason that we "will be dead soon
enough."

It is this knowledge that death will one day take away everything
that makes Saroyan a fine, acute poet of yearning. In his flawless
story "Five Ripe Pears," a young boy cuts class to go and pluck, in
their moment of perfect unstayable ripeness, the pears he has been so
intently willing into their existence that they seem to him, by
virtue of his love for them, to be rightfully his:

Running to pears as a boy of six is any number of classically
beautiful things: music and poetry and maybe war. I reached the trees
breathless but alert and smiling. The pears were fat and ready for
eating, and for plucking from limbs. They were ready. The sun was
warm. The moment was a moment of numerous clarities, air, body, and
mind.

"I wanted wanting and getting, and I invented means," says the
narrator. But of course, the act of concourse that takes place where
pear and daylight and the boy's yearning inexorably come
together--that unstoppable blossoming of the world in the light of
human attention--is untranslatable, and therefore incommunicable; and
in it, Saroyan accesses the intractable loneliness borne at one time
or another by every human being. The boy can expect no understanding
>From anyone; he is branded a thief and receives a "sound licking with
a leather strap" for he possesses no language in which to mount a
defense of beauty's power and our helplessness before it:

A tragic misfortune of youth is that it is speechless when it has the
most to say, and a sadness of maturity is that it is garrulous when
it has forgotten where to begin and what language to use. Oh, we have
been well-educated in error, all right. We at least know that we have
-forgotten.

"I know I was deeply sincere about wanting the ripe pears, and I know
I was determined to get them, and to remain innocent," says the boy,
and in that last phrase lies the unassuming power of Saroyan's
writing. He knew firsthand that "people ain't necessarily the same in
the evening as they were in the morning." But regardless of his
characters' circumstances or their actions, for him, they remained
innocent: "If nothing else, drawing into the edge of full death every
person is restored to innocence--to have lived was not his fault."

Wayworn wings. A toy to stop you from crying. Pears. A word that
might explain everything. In William Saroyan, it is not that you can
keep the thing you love from disappearing in the distance, or that
the heart in each of us does not break to watch it go. It is not that
you will never die. But that, "in the time of your life," you must
find a way to live, an imperative both metaphysical and urgently
practical that none of us escapes. And that is the why of it, the
reason to read Saroyan, to read for the reason he said he wrote: "To
go on living."

To be pointed back toward the strange, once-in-every-lifetime miracle
of your own being, while you are still here, "still the brave man or
woman or child of the age, still famous for your breathing
uninterruptedly." To keep dancing like Harry the Hoofer, even in
expectation of the inevitable cessation of all movement. "It's a
goofy dance," done "with great sorrow, but much energy." But, as
Saroyan wrote, "What a thing it is to be alive."

Ann Stapleton is a writer in Ohio.

http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G1-175050976.html

[Siamanto]

Re: Cultural Horizons of Armenians

RESTORING A SOUL TO AN ARMENIAN MANUSCRIPT
by Emily Yehle

Roll Call
February 27, 2008 Wednesday

In a world of mass-produced paperbacks, magazines and electronic books,
Tamara Ohanyan lives in a literary past.

She works among dyed leather, hand-sewn bindings and centuries-old
parchment. As a book conservator, she restores old documents so they
can be preserved - both physically and electronically - for the future.

It's a skill she learned in Armenia, the landlocked former Soviet
Republic in the Southern Caucasus, where she grew up in the capital,
Yerevan, the daughter of a violinist and a teacher.

Now she works on the National Digital Library Program, one of the
Library of Congress' biggest projects, turning thousands of the
nation's most important documents into digital images accessible on
the Web.

But she also volunteers her time to restore the handful of medieval
Armenian works housed in the Library.

"It's creative to think about the best solution to find for a book,"
said Ohanyan, 42. "I think it's a combination of art, science and
skills. You get from all these a solution to save a book for another
200 years."

There are 47 members of the book conservation team, including Ohanyan,
at the Library of Congress. Some specialize in photographic materials,
while others have more experience with book materials, such as the
stretched animal skin of old parchment.

Ohanyan's cubicle is a workspace dedicated to her art. Her shelf brims
with books on book conservation, while her drawers contain tattered
pieces of cloth and parchment.

Her latest volunteer project, an 18th century Armenian book, is close
by. She recently replaced its headband with a reproduction of her
own: a red, white and black band that connects the fragile pages to
the book covers. To make this one, Ohanyan simultaneously used three
needles for the three silk strands; some headbands take four or five.

Ohanyan is valuable to the Library's Armenian collection not only
because she can read the medieval Armenian language, but also because
she has unmatched experience in restoring 16th, 17th and 18th century
Armenian books. Before she came to the United States, she restored
hundreds of her country's manuscripts. The Library, on the other hand,
only has about 15 medieval manuscripts in Armenian.

But it promised a diversity of other materials and books, drawing
Ohanyan to the United States. Fellow conservator Yasmeen Khan, an
Islamic manuscript specialist, said the Library's 133 million-strong
collection gives conservators the chance to touch history from a host
of countries.

"If you can handle a book that was bound in the 16th century and you
take it apart and see how it was made and put it back together, you
feel a connection with the person who put it together in the past,"
Khan said. "It's like taking the telephone apart when you were a kid."

'An Artist Herself'

Ohanyan is a rare conservator in the small world of book
conservation. She is the only one at the Library - and one of few in
the world - who has such vast experience mending medieval Armenian
manuscripts and recreating some of the old craftwork.

She first came to the United States in 2000 to learn Western
bookbinding, studying as an unpaid intern at the Library of Congress
for a year. She applied to several American programs in an effort to
expand her skills.

"This was the only one that wasn't paid and I chose this one," she
said with a laugh. "I think I made the right choice. I've learned here
so much. It's just an amazing, amazing place to learn and increase
quality as a specialist."

Colleagues describe Ohanyan as dedicated and talented, an artist who
finds solutions to the challenges presented by each unique book.

Levon Avdoyan, the Library's Armenian and Georgian area specialist,
first met Ohanyan when she was an intern eight years ago. He gave her
one of the biggest challenges on his shelves: a 17th-century Armenian
book of gospels, rendered virtually unusable by fire and water damage.

First assessed for treatment back in the 1980s, officials said it
could only be done by someone who could read the medieval language,
primarily because the text was rubbing off and it was hard to see
where one page ended and another began.

With Khan's help, Ohanyan set to work restoring what Khan called
"a block of moldy cheese."

By the end of her yearlong internship, Ohanyan had unraveled the pages
with the help of chemical solutions and a microscope, fit together
the pieces of each page like a jigsaw puzzle and restored the cover
and spine. It took immense patience: She had to take the book apart
to put it back together.

To make sure the pages stayed whole, Ohanyan used flexible Japanese
tissue as reinforcement. She restored the leather cover and sewed
the pages to a new spine - all in the style and color of its original
binding.

Pages that fell apart upon touch can now be flipped through by
scholars. Ohanyan even put in her own personal touches.

"She was unhappy with the end papers, so, being an artist herself, she
hand-painted them," Avdoyan said. "She really is a marvel, I must say."

Problem Solving

Ohanyan learned to mend the spines, pages and covers of Armenian
books at the Matenadaran (literally, "book depository") in Yerevan.

There are about five manuscript conservators at the institution,
which houses thousands of ancient Armenian works. She goes back often
to participate in workshops; last summer, she built the protective
cover for the Etchmiadzin Gospel, a famous 10th century Armenian book
of gospels that has a sixth century ivory cover.

Every book seems to pique Ohanyan's interest. She handles the Armenian
religious text on her desk carefully, running her hand down the
leather cover and gingerly rotating it to show off its craftsmanship.

She talks about its origins, its mixture of Western and Armenian
techniques, and the new challenge each book presents.

"She's an excellent problem solver. She understands that she has to
learn from the collection item itself via analysis, testing and study
so she can solve the problems it poses," said Diane Vogt-O'Connor,
the Library's chief of conservation. "She works very carefully and
thoughtfully."

Ohanyan comes from an artistic and literary family. Her father, Alfred
Ohanyan, helped found the country's first jazz orchestra and played
first violin in the national orchestra; her mother taught Armenian
literature. Her brother, Ara, is a filmmaker in Armenia.

When she was 5, her mother brought her to an art school for children.

"My feet didn't touch the floor," she recalled. She had to wait two
more years to start classes.

Ohanyan eventually got her bachelor's degree in art and Armenian
art history and decided to attend the Matenadaran to learn about
book conservation.

A Connection to History

Her interest in medieval books stems from her work as a painter of
miniatures, the religious-themed paintings that appear in many of the
books she mends. She still paints, using pigments that she made with
the same materials and techniques used in the 13th century. Adorned
with saints, halos and bright colors, her works range from the size
of a piece of notebook paper to that of a business card.

The transition from painting to book conservation seemed natural,
she said.

"They are so connected to each other," she said. "For me, it wasn't
a big difference to change."

Though she is part of a diaspora that is easily double the 3 million
people who live in Armenia, she maintains remarkably close ties to
her homeland. Ohanyan goes to an Armenian church and is married to
an Armenian piano tuner and restorer. The population of Armenians in
D.C. is quickly increasing, she said; she sees new faces in the pews
every weekend.

She shares with them a connection to Armenia's tumultuous history:
the massacre of more than 1 million Armenians by the Ottoman Empire
in 1915.

Ohanyan's maternal grandmother and grandfather lost their families
at 14 to the killings and were forced to live out their remaining
childhoods in orphanages.

Her grandfather often told the story of losing his 8-year-old brother
in the chaos while fleeing Turkey. He found him upon arrival in a
small town in Armenia, only to be separated again when U.S. officials
took the younger brother to America. Ohanyan's grandfather searched
his entire life for his brother, without success.

Ohanyan readily takes out pictures of her hometown and keeps photos
of her nephews close by. But she is glad she came to the United States.

"I always want to learn something," she said. "To learn, you have to
be outside."

http://groong.usc.edu/news/msg222782.html

[Siamanto]

Re: Cultural Horizons of Armenians

Amy Einhorn preempted world English rights to M.T. Mustian's The
Gendarme for her imprint at Putnam with a six-figure offer to Scott
Mendel. Armenian-American Mustian's debut is described as an epic
novel about a 92-year-old Turkish-American man suffering from dementia
who suddenly starts having vivid dreams about his role in the Armenian
genocide of 1915, the young woman hefell in love with and spared-and
how he sets out in secret to beg her forgiveness.


Norton Wins New Rosenberg

by Matthew Thornton -- Publishers Weekly, 2/25/2008
Norton Wins New Rosenberg

Bob Weil at Norton beat out six other houses in an auction for Tina
Rosenberg's The Social Cure: Cracking the World's Toughest Problems
Through the Power of the Group; Gail Ross sold North American
rights. The book will look at intractable social problems, both global
and domestic, that appear to haveno solutions, providing inspirational
cases in which peer pressure has been used to change behavior in
instances where previously nothing had worked. This is Rosenberg's
third book, and the first since 1995's The Haunted Land, which won the
Pulitzer and the National Book Award. Pub date is spring 2010.

Beilock Auctions First Book
Leslie Meredith at the Free Press was the winner, world rights, at a
two-day auction for University of Chicago psychologist Sian Beilock's
first book, Choke: What the Secrets of the Brain Reveal About Success
and Failure at Work and Play; Dan O'Connell at the Strothman Agency
made the six-figure sale.
Beilock, whose research has made her a sought-after media commentator
and speaker, will reveal new evidence that turns on its head what we
know about body-brain intelligence and performance, specifically what
makes us flub and freeze in tests, in the boardroom and on the playing
field. The book will also provide practical solutions to prevent
choking. Pub date is 2010.

Dutton Preempts
Just before an auction in which at least eight publishers were slated
to participate, Amy Hertz preempted world rights to New York Times
health columnist and Well blogger Tara Parker-Pope's The Science of
Marriage via Lynn Johnston. The book will distill the avalanche of
research about what makes relationships work-and not work-into
practical, evidence-based advice. Tentative pub date is late
2009/early 2010.
Ben Sevier preempted North American rights to two new novels by
Jonathan Tropper via Simon Lipskar. The first of the two, to be
published in 2009, deals with fatherhood. Tropper is the author of
four previous novels, most recently How to Talk to a Widower,
published last year by Delacorte. Plume will publish both new books in
paperback following the Dutton hardcover.

Debut Preempts
Amy Einhorn preempted world English rights to M.T. Mustian's The
Gendarme for her imprint at Putnam with a six-figure offer to Scott
Mendel.
Armenian-American Mustian's debut is described as an epic novel about
a 92-year-old Turkish-American man suffering from dementia who
suddenly starts having vivid dreams about his role in the Armenian
genocide of 1915, the young woman hefell in love with and spared-and
how he sets out in secret to beg her forgiveness.
Sarah Knight at Holt preempted an untitled memoir by two-time
California Poet Laureate Rhoda Janzen via Michael Bourret at Dystel &
Goderich. Janzen tackles love, faith, family and corsets in this
recounting of the months she spent recuperating after a bad breakup
(her husband left her for a guy named Bob) in her parents' quirky,
close-knit Mennonite community. Holt has North American rights; pub
date is summer 2009.

Two-Book Deal for Lieb
Coexecutive producer of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart Josh Lieb has
soldI Am a Genius of Unspeakable Evil and I Want to Be Your Class
President; Jessica Rothenberg at Razorbill won North American rights
to two books in an auction conducted by Richard Abate. Lieb's first
novel is about a 12-year-old genius who puts his plans for world
domination on hold in order to run forclass president and please his
father.

© 2008, Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All
Rights Reserved.

http://www.publishersweekly.com/article/CA6534852.html

[Siamanto]

Re: Cultural Horizons of Armenians

The Musical Scene

TIGRAN HAMASYAN: NEW ERA

All About Jazz

http://www.allaboutjazz.com/php/article.php?id=28615

March 10 2008
PA

At twenty-one, pianist Tigran Hamasyan has already done much to
launch his name into the world of emergent young lions. He has toured
throughout Europe, moving beyond his native Armenia to take prizes
in jazz competitions from Moscow to Monaco. And, after winning
the prestigious Thelonious Monk Jazz Piano Competition in 2006,
he studied in the United States before returning to Paris, where he
recorded his first album, New Era.

Hamasyan's predicament is a common one. Like many young jazz musicians
releasing their first records, he tries to prove his place in jazz
with a few standards, while also working overly hard to showcase his
range as a performer through originals and atypical tunes. The result
is an album that tries to do too many things, and leaves the listener
without a singular sense of the musician's voice.

The suite that opens the album illustrates this problem. The first
part, "Homesick," is an energetic romp, carefully structured to
let the trio work through a series of hits on the melody, before
Hamasyan takes off with an up-tempo solo that hovers over harmonies
in the manner of Keith Jarrett's trio work. "Part 2: New Era" borrows
a single tumbling fragment of the earlier melody and expands it into
a vamp, with Hamasyan doubling on piano and keyboards.

Both sections of the suite would make for nice compositions on their
own. But in the end, the relationship between these two parts is so
tenuous that one wonders why Hamasyan wanted to draw them together as
a suite. And the fact is that the young winner of the Thelonious Monk
Jazz Piano Competition can actually perform any of the aesthetics
that he samples on New Era. He simply needs to choose which one he
will devote himself to for the time being.

Naturally, the most arresting sounds that come off this record are
the ones that make the most use of Hamasyan's unique background. In
addition to the spate of jazz originals, New Era features two
Armenian folk songs. "Aparani Par" and "Zada Es" not only fill out
the album-they give it depth, nuance, and a unique character. This
development is largely due to Vardan Grigoryan, who plays a series of
Armenian woodwinds on these tracks. The narrow, often oriental sounds
of the duduk and the shvi, wailing above the melody on "Aparani Par,"
are not easily forgotten.

The world of young jazz pianists is disturbingly broad, and it's easy
to get lost within it, even if one so clearly exhibits the talents
and potential of a Tigran Hamasyan. Where this player will be able to
come to the fore is in the characteristics that make him an original.

Too many others will release first records with "Well, You Needn't" and
"Solar" on them as proof of validity, but a song like "Gypsyology"
could be found nowhere else. It has all the gaudy bravado of an
Eastern European folk dance, and it's frequently hilarious, with its
constantly rising chords and unstoppable backbeat. But it's also
devoid of self-consciousness, and it's the kind of song that one
can't help but listen to.

If Tigran Hamasyan can bring together his virtuosic understanding
of past piano masters with this taste for the folksy and dramatic
to create a singular voice out of them, he has a long and exciting
career before him.

Tracks: Part 1: Homesick; Part 2: New Era; Leaving Paris; Aparani Par
(The Dance Of Aparan); Well, You Needn't; Memories From Hankavan And
now; Gypsyology; Zada Es; Solar; Forgotten World.

Personnel: Tigran Hamasyan: piano, keyboards; Francois Moutin:
acoustic bass; Louis Moutin: drums; Vardan Grigoryan: duduk (4,8),
shvi (4), zurna(8).

MOSCOW SEDUCED BY FRENCH FEMME FATALE

Russia Today
Feb 1 2008
Russia

Seductive French singer Helene Segara has appeared in Moscow for
the first time. The vocalist, of Armenian and Italian origin, rose
to fame after playing the role of a gypsy femme fatale in the hit
French musical Notre Dame de Paris.

Feminine and graceful, Segara performs songs, with lyrics she has
written, and describes love and loneliness.

This time she will address a totally new audience.

"[Russia] is another world for me, and I expect to meet Russian
people. I don't know them, I have no idea what they are. I expect to
discover. I've tried to learn a little Russian. This week I've seen a
Russian teacher, it's very difficult language, but I'll do my best,"
Segara promised.

She often performs in a duet, among her partners was Italian opera
star Andrea Bocelli. In Moscow she sang with Veronique Ambrose.

In her childhood Segara often used to dance barefoot, so her mother
called her Esmeralda, after the gypsy character in Notre Dame de Paris.

It was an omen. Years later, she took on the role of Esmeralda on
stage, one she wants to keep forever.

Some years ago, Segara nearly lost her voice and had to undergo
surgery. But the mother of three recovered and is now back on stage.

And she says - with even more energy and more feeling in her voice.

http://www.russiatoday.ru/entertainment/news/20390

SOPRANO RETURNS, BELLINI AND KOMITAS IN TOW
By Allan Kozinn

New York Times

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/11/arts/music/11isab.html?ref=arts

March 11 2008
NY

Isabel Bayrakdarian's latest major appearance in New York was to
have been singing Susanna in the Metropolitan Opera's production of
"Le Nozze di Figaro" in October. But Ms. Bayrakdarian, very pregnant
at the time, bowed out. On Saturday evening, five months later and
one child lighter, this Armenian-Canadian soprano, supported by her
husband and pianist, Serouj Kradjian, was in fighting trim, or at
least fine voice, in a recital at Zankel Hall.

Ms. Bayrakdarian seems fond of balancing standard repertory with
rarities. In a 2006 recital at the Morgan Library & Museum, she offered
selections by Pauline Viardot, Rossini art songs and flamenco-tinged
pieces by Fernando Obradors. This time, she retained elements of that
formula. The Italian-opera-composer-as-miniaturist slot was given
to Bellini. In place of Viardot, the underexposed curiosity was the
Armenian composer Komitas. And Obradors was back, represented by a
different group of works.

Ms. Bayrakdarian began with an alluringly dark-hued rendering of
Bellini's "Vaga luna, che inargenti," and more extroverted readings
of "Per pieta, bell'idol mio" and "La Ricordanza." In the last,
her dynamics were fluid, particularly in her upper range. She took
risks, but they paid off: her performance, subtle on the surface,
had an electrifying undercurrent.

She also took an unusual approach to Poulenc's "Banalites," opting
for bright timbres and crisp enunciation instead of the smoky, muted
tone singers typically bring to 20th-century French music. Usually,
the smoky approach works just fine; both the texts and the music seem
to suggest it. But Ms. Bayrakdarian's altered perspective put these
songs in a fresh light.

She closed the first half of her program with two visions of
Shakespeare's Ophelia. Jake Heggie's accessible "Songs and Sonnets
to Ophelia" (1999) wraps a dramatic, shapely cloak around four poems
by Edna St. Vincent Millay, and Ms. Bayrakdarian made them sound
graceful and likable. But she did Mr. Heggie no favor by putting his
work beside her thoughtfully shaped, trenchant account of Berlioz's
"Mort d'Ophelie."

Ms. Bayrakdarian made a strong case for five invitingly modal songs by
Komitas, among them the pained "Call to the Sea" and a sweetly turned
lullaby. She also did a lovely job of highlighting the folkloric
accents within Ravel's "Five Popular Greek Melodies," and closed her
program with five endearingly melismatic, sun-drenched Obradors songs.