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METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART / world premiere of Mary Kouyoumdjian and Atom Egoyan's ​They Will Take My Island 
Digital premiere Jan. 26 @ 7pm
The Metropolitan Museum of Art presents the digital world premiere of Armenian-American composer Mary Kouyoumdjian and Oscar-nominated Armenian-Canadian filmmaker Atom Egoyan's MetLiveArts commission, They Will Take My Island (2020), a highly personal 30-minute video with performances by the JACK and Silvana string quartets.
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They Will Take My Island is a collaboration between Kouyoumdjian and Egoyan over their mutual admiration of the Armenian painter Arshile Gorky, who has been highly influential to their work, and is a musical documentary hybrid infused with themes of family and immigration. The work integrates audio and film footage from Egoyan's Ararat, a film that explores the life of Arshile Gorky in the context of the Armenian Genocide and modern life, and A Portrait of Arshile, a film Egoyan and his wife Arsinée Khanjian made in dedication to their son, named after the painter. It also includes interviews with Saskia Spender, granddaughter of Arshile Gorky and President of the Arshile Gorky Foundation; Parker Field, Managing Director of the Arshile Gorky Foundation; and Michael Taylor, Chief Curator of the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts.
politically fearless”
- New York Music Daily
Intensely moving, boldly beautiful, this could be the future of a new kind of documentary”
- Santa Barbara Independent
dives beneath surface musicality to find humanity”​
- I Care if You Listen
NEW YORK PHILHARMONIC/ commission for "Project 19" POSTPONED
Sound ON: Be Prepared! Sound and stimulation are set to “on” at this new-music series at The Appel Room, overlooking Central Park. The second season begins with Philharmonic musicians performing music for prepared instruments, including in World Premieres by Mary Kouyoumdjian and Melinda Wagner, commissioned by the Philharmonic as part of Project 19, and works from the 20th and 21st centuries — in a concert hosted and curated by Nadia Sirota, Creative Partner. 
​PAPER PIANOS/ commission by Alarm Will Sound & EMPAC
​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 Desmond White
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