politically fearless” terrifyingly dark” emotionally wracking” dives beneath surface musicality to find humanity” Intensely moving, boldly beautiful, this could be the future of a new kind of documentary” |
News
Pulitzer Finalist in Music/ Paper Pianos with Alarm Will Sound, Nigel Maister, & Kevork Mourad
Staged music-documentary Paper Pianos is a finalist for the 2024 Pulitzer Prize in Music. 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. Next performance: May 10 at The Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center; College Park, MD; Performed by Alarm Will Sound 
ADORATION/ LA Opera with Beth Morrison Projects, Feb 19-23, 2025 at REDCAT
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. Hate is too often portrayed as binary. We either hate or we don’t. We hate someone for something they did or some perceived slight, or we hate “the other.” Yet we are not born with hate—it is learned, nurtured, and developed over the course of a lifetime. Adoration tells two simultaneous stories—a fictional story of terrorism and betrayal juxtaposed with a real story of family strife and rejection of something foreign. |
WITNESS / Debut Album Release with Kronos Quartet
Announcing WITNESS, a new portrait album of works in collaboration with the Kronos Quartet. WITNESS will be out Friday, March 14, 2025 on CD, vinyl and streaming on Phenotypic Recordings. The works featured on Kouyoumdjian’s first portrait album exemplify her use of the arts as an amplifier of expression, integrating testimonies from resilient individuals of the Lebanese Civil War and Armenian Genocide, field recordings of place, and folk recordings of the early 20th century to invite empathy around social and political conflict. “This collection is an open letter to the tragic hymn of transmitted trauma and the possibility of art and magnificently gifted artists to help create new life.” – Filmmaker Atom Egoyan Cover artwork and design by Armenian-Canadian photographer Osheen Harruthoonyan. Phenotypic Recordings will donate its streaming proceeds from this album to Kooyrigs and the Lebanese Red Cross to support the Armenian and Lebanese communities. Featuring recordings of Bombs of Beirut, Silent Cranes, Groung [Crane], and I Haven’t the Words. Read more about the album and listen to the first single, Bombs of Beirut: "II. The War" |
METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART / Mary Kouyoumdjian and Atom Egoyan's They Will Take My Island
Ongoing The Metropolitan Museum of Art commissions and presents 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. 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. Score performed by JACK and Silvana Quartets and mixed by Jascha Narveson. |
Featured Video
SAN FRANCISCO SYMPHONY/ presents WATER AND DUST with violinist Helen Kim and Post:ballet
Water and Dust pulls its inspiration from author and journalist Mark Arax's book The Dreamt Land: Chasing Water and Dust Across California, which was recommended by dear friend Samuel Adams upon discovering our shared upbringing in the Bay Area. Arax investigates the water crisis and interweaves his family's narrative as Armenian immigrants to California – Water and Dust draws from personal memories of driving the dry stretches of farmland on Highway 5 with my own Armenian family's relocation to the state. Special thanks to collaborators Post:Ballet, the San Francisco Symphony, and especially to the extraordinary violinist Helen Kim, who so thoughtfully gives this piece its grit and flow.
Water and Dust pulls its inspiration from author and journalist Mark Arax's book The Dreamt Land: Chasing Water and Dust Across California, which was recommended by dear friend Samuel Adams upon discovering our shared upbringing in the Bay Area. Arax investigates the water crisis and interweaves his family's narrative as Armenian immigrants to California – Water and Dust draws from personal memories of driving the dry stretches of farmland on Highway 5 with my own Armenian family's relocation to the state. Special thanks to collaborators Post:Ballet, the San Francisco Symphony, and especially to the extraordinary violinist Helen Kim, who so thoughtfully gives this piece its grit and flow.
Header photo by Desmond White