News

METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART / evening of Kouyoumdjian's works featuring Atom Egoyan, Laurie Olinder, Silvana Quartet, and JACK Quartet + world premiere of ​They Will Take My Island
Unreleased scenes and highly personal short films by Oscar-nominated filmmaker Atom Egoyan (The Sweet Hereafter) are given original new scores by Armenian American composer Mary Kouyoumdjian in this MetLiveArts commission. Egoyan's highly personal films and excerpts on the life of abstract painter Arshile Gorky are infused with themes of family and immigration. Kouyoumdjian's string quartets Bombs of Beirut and Silent Cranes explore her family's history with the Lebanese Civil War and Armenian Genocide through survivor testimonies and documentary.
Intensely moving, boldly beautiful, this could be the future of a new kind of documentary”
- Santa Barbara Independent
politically fearless”
- New York Music Daily
NEW YORK PHILHARMONIC/ commission for "Project 19"
100 years ago, American women gained the right to vote with the ratification of the 19th Amendment. The NYP commissioned 19 women to write 19 new pieces — the single largest women-only commissioning initiative in orchestral history. 
​PAPER PIANOS/ commission by Alarm Will Sound
​Paper Pianos is an evening-length multimedia work exploring the dislocation, longing, and optimism of refugees. The piece combines narratives from four refugees and resettlement workers: the Afghan pianist Milad Yousufi, Getachew Bashir (Ethiopia), Hani Ali (Somalia), and Akil Aljaysh (Iraq). Recordings of the protagonists from interviews conducted by creators Mary Kouyoumdjian (composer) and Nigel Maister (text and staging) are incorporated with the intricate hand-drawn animations of visual artist Kervork Mourad to vividly depict the dramatic emotional landscape of displacement and resettlement experienced by refugees throughout the world.
​ADORATION/ commission by Beth Morrison Projects & OPERA America
​​Kouyoumdjian wins OPERA America commissioning grant to create an opera adaptation of filmmaker Atom Egoyan's film Adoration ​with Beth Morrison Projects and librettist Royce Vavrek. An adaptation of Atom Egoyan’s film of the same name, ADORATION follows Simon, an
orphaned high school student. As part of a dramatic writing exercise, Simon’s teacher encourages him to appropriate details from a historical terrorist attack as an event perpetrated by his parents. When his story goes viral, Simon uses the hysteria within his community and on the internet to highlight the challenges of intolerance and racism in our society. The fictional and actual circumstances of the loss of Simon’s family are revealed in fragments, only fitting together with the final revelation that the prejudices of Simon’s maternal grandfather led to his parents’ deaths.

Featured Video

Mary Kouyoumdjian describes her pathway to becoming a composer and the genesis of her latest opera, ADORATION​, based on the film by Atom Egoyan and written in collaboration with librettist Royce Vavrek.
Header photo by Dominica Eriksen
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