Chronological / Works in Progress / ​Musical Documentary / Solo / Small Ensemble / Large Ensemble / Opera, Voice, Chorus / Orchestra / Theater and Dance / Fixed Media / Film / Video Library 

Expand on the right of each work for available listening, viewing, and program notes.
Published scores are available through Schott's PSNY. For unpublished scores, email [email protected]

ANDOUNI (2024) 
Commissioned by New York Philharmonic, Project 19
amplified chamber orchestra, AUDIO PLAYBACK, & PROJECTED PHOTOGRAPHY / 20'

ANDOUNI (Homeless) is a music-documentary hybrid in collaboration with photojournalist Scout Tufankjian around the recent genocide of Armenians indigenous to Artsakh/Nagorno-Karabakh. Scout’s photos of the current refugee crisis and precursors to it are complemented by interviews and field recordings taken by myself on a trip with Scout to Armenia in spring of 2023, as well as interviews and sounds contributed by activists on-the-ground in fall of 2023, during the ethnic cleansing and mass exodus of Artsakh-Armenians from Nagorno-Karabakh into the Republic of Armenia. I have always admired Scout’s ability to invite the viewer of her photography into the more personal and human space of larger political conflict, both in the heaviness of tragedy and the joys resilient individuals find in order to push onward, and this space for empathy is urgently needed with the current events of Armenians. 

Scout and I had originally intended to create a piece around the impact of the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh war––never could we have imagined that between that time and now that Armenians would experience a nearly year-long blockade by Azerbaijan of the Lachin Corridor, starving out Artsakh-Armenians and preventing them from medical access; the ethnic cleansing of all Armenians from the territory, with negligible international intervention; having their homeland of thousands of years become absorbed by another country; cultural heritage sites demarcated and destroyed; and the massive influx of refugees into Armenia, whose infrastructure had already been struggling. From the 1915 Armenian genocide to today’s, this is a community forcibly themed by erasure, but it is a resilient one. The voices in this work speak to that resilience. 
Special thanks to all of the interviewees for their generosity in speaking the unspeakable, to my dear friend Scout for her unwavering commitment to sharing a community who will not be erased, the Children of Armenia Fund, and Teach for Armenia.

Interviewees & Speakers: Knar Abrahamyan, Haig Boyadjian, Shahen Araboghlian, fortune teller, high school graduates (contributed by Mary Kouyoumdjian); Gayane Malonyan, Nyree Abrahamian (contributed by Nyree Abrahamian and the Country of Dust podcast); Vera Khatchatyran (contributed by Scout Tufankjian and Taline Oundjian, translated by Taleen Babayan)
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Photography by Scout Tufankjian | Field recordings from Armenia gathered and interviews edited by Mary Kouyoumdjian

​To listen to an archival recording, please contact [email protected]

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Paper Pianos (2016-2023) *2024 Pulitzer Prize Finalist in Music
Commissioned by Alarm Will Sound/ in residence at EMPAC / in collaboration with director and writer Nigel Maister and projection artist Kevork Mourad
Amplified Chamber Orchestra, audio playback, film, staging/ 90'

​“A socially urgent multi-media work that boldly melds music and audio documentary with first-person stories of refugees, exploring how music serves as solace and inspiration under conditions of displacement.”
                        -2024 Pulitzer Prize Committee

The plight of refugees and immigrants has perhaps never been more precarious in America than it does at the present moment. Paper Pianos (2024 Pulitzer Prize in Music Finalist) is an evening-length music-theatre and sonic-documentary work that speaks eloquently and evocatively to this moment, hauntingly exploring the journeys and obstacles refugees confront as they uproot lives and livelihoods, families and friendships, in search of safer harbors. Co-created by Armenian-American, GRAMMY®-nominated composer Mary Kouyoumdjian and South African-American director and writer Nigel Maister, and performed by the contemporary, GRAMMY® Award–winning ensemble Alarm Will Sound, the work examines dislocation, longing, and optimism—both from the perspective of refugees themselves and from those who provide services to them. Drawing on interviews conducted by Maister and Kouyoumdjian with refugees and refugee resettlement workers, Paper Pianos resists abstraction in favor of deeply personal testimony. 

The work is anchored in four distinct voices of refugees and resettlement workers who have immigrated to New York: Afghan pianist, Milad Yousufi, and refugee resettlement workers (themselves refugees), Getachew “Gee-Gee” Bashir (Ethiopia), Hani Ali (Somalia), and Akil Aljaysh (Iraq). Milad Yousufi fled to New York from Kabul, where he lived under the Taliban’s threat for pursuing music. His experiences of drawing piano keys on paper to teach himself to play in silence, thus avoiding life-threatening censure from the authorities, gives the piece its name. Getachew Bashir, a high-ranking judge in Ethiopia, left his country when the judiciary and his independence threatened to become co-opted by the regime. Hani Ali was a child of the refugee experience, born on the run and coming of age as a young girl negotiating the terrors of being stateless in a displacement camp. Akil Aljaysh, from a prominent family, fled Iraq after being tortured and worked his way through Syria and Lebanon to the United States.

Their interwoven stories of turmoil, displacement, flight, and hope—and of the inevitable compromises imposed by starting anew in an unfamiliar country—provide a deeply universal and humanistic foundation upon which Kouyoumdjian and Maister build this singular multimedia work. Paper Pianos aims to engage audiences viscerally in one of the pressing problems of today’s world, focusing on the heartfelt immediacy of real-life experience.

Supported, in part, through a Pacific Harmony Foundation commission grant; the National Endowment for the Arts; a New York State Council on the Arts Individual Artists Composer Commission Award with the support of Governor Andrew M. Cuomo and the New York State Legislature; New Music USA; and by a project grant from The MAP Fund. The MAP Fund is primarily supported by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation. Additional funds come from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation

They Will Take My Island (2020) 
Commissioned by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, in collaboration with filmmaker Atom Egoyan
amplified string octet, audio playback, film/ 30'

​They Will Take My Island is a collaboration between myself and filmmaker Atom Egoyan over our mutual admiration of the Armenian painter Arshile Gorky, who has been highly influential to both of our work. The work integrates: (1) audio and film footage from Egoyan’s films 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; (2) interviews conducted and recorded by the myself with art historians and family of Gorky’s.
 
It is an honor to work with both of these artists: Gorky’s resilience in surviving the Armenian Genocide and living to create such meaningful and impactful work has stayed in my heart since seeing his work for the first time in Egoyan’s film Ararat nearly twenty years ago. Through this film, Egoyan became my first role model of a living Armenian artist who speaks loudly through pulling his heritage into contemporary and socially complex narratives. As Saskia Spender, President of the Arshile Gorky Foundation and granddaughter of Gorky, says in her interview for this piece: “When people are not in a position to talk about truths, perhaps because there is a political or conflict situation, then the artists are the truth tellers.”
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Collaborator and Film by: Atom Egoyan
Film Edited by: Cameron Davis
Interviews Recorded and Edited by: Mary Kouyoumdjian     
Interviewees: Parker Field, Saskia Spender, Michael Taylor
Audio Samples Include: Interviews and audio from Egoyan’s films Ararat and A Portrait of Arshile


Commissioned by the Live Arts Department at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and premiered by The Met on January 26, 2021 

They Would Only Walk (2020)
Commissioned by Buffalo String Works
amplified string quintet, string orchestra, and audio playback/ 10'

They Would Only Walk is written for and in dedication to the community of Buffalo String Works. This piece was developed through a residency with BSW, an organization that provides string classes to children of refugee families in Buffalo, NY. Students and I worked together to workshop extended techniques and sounds that would evoke feelings of travel. Refugee families – both adults and children - generously volunteered to share their journeys to Buffalo and the meaning of music in their lives. Recorded interviews narrate this piece created for this extraordinary community. ​

Mustard Sweatshirts Are Forever (2019)
Commissioned by American Composers Forum for Roomful of Teeth's 10th Anniversary at Mass MoCA
acapella voice octet/ 10'

In this past year, I have made a promise to myself to really get to know the performers I collaborate with – not just as extraordinary musicians, but also as extraordinary human beings. Let the record show, that the members of Roomful of Teeth are in fact extraordinary. The libretto is comprised of interviews with each of the members of Teeth. Conversations included everything from individual backgrounds, to thoughtful sentiments for their colleagues, and personal reflections. It’s my humble hope that this piece is not only an exercise for the members of Teeth to internalize their bandmates’ words, but for the audience to get to know these beautiful people as well.
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Mary Kouyoumdjian · Mustard Sweatshirts Are Forever (Perf. by Roomful of Teeth)

I Can Barely Look (2016)
Commissioned by Brooklyn Youth Chorus and WQXR with support of the MAP Fund
chorus (soprano/alto), flute, clarinet, baritone saxophone, bassoon, percussion, piano, violin, cello, contrabass / 10'

An exploration of how we, particularly youth, sympathize with the Syrian refugee crisis. Members of the Brooklyn Youth Chorus were presented with a collection of media-circulated photos of Syrian refugees. They were asked to respond to a series of questions about the photos, and their responses were then used to create the libretto for this work.
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Paper Pianos: "You are not a kid" (2016)
Commission by Alarm Will Sound and the Mizzou International Composers Festival
flute/piccolo, oboe, clarinet/bass clarinet, bassoon, horn, trumpet, bass trombone, two percussionists, piano, violin 1, violin 2/voice, viola/voice, cello, contrabass, conductor, and electronic playback/ 10'

A portrait piece about Milad Yousufi, a young refugee from Kabul, Afghanistan whose life was threatened by the Taliban for pursuing music. According to the Taliban, music is forbidden in Islam. "You are not a kid" is the first movement of a larger work sharing Milad's incredible life story. It focuses primarily on his childhood during the civil war and integrates a prerecorded backing track excerpted from my interview with him.
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Become Who I Am (2015)
Commission by Brooklyn Youth Chorus for BYC and Kronos Quartet
chorus (soprano/alto), string quartet, audio playback (STRING ORCHESTRA VERSION AVAILABLE) / 10'

There are many factors that can contribute to gender inequality in the workplace, from historical views to culturally imposed biases. I’m particularly interested in the idea that an individual’s level of confidence in their identity and abilities – or lack of confidence – can affect how they deal with gender barriers. Become Who I Am is comprised of interviews I recorded with members of the Brooklyn Youth Chorus, who ranged from 13 to 17 years of age. Volunteers were asked to share what they were passionate about, when they felt most confident and/or insecure, to respond to a series of gender inequality statistics, and to brainstorm solutions to the disparity in numbers. Out of their responses, I constructed the libretto and prerecorded backing track.

Silent Cranes (2015)
Commissioned by Kronos Quartet, projection art by Laurie Olinder, poetry by David Barsamian
amplified string quartet, audio playback, live processing / 30'

1. slave to your voice
2. you did not answer
3. [with blood-soaked feathers]
4. you flew away

In commemoration of the Armenian Genocide Centenary, Silent Cranes is inspired by the Armenian folk song Groung (Crane) in which the singer calls out to the migratory bird, begging for word from their homeland, only to have the crane respond with silence and fly away. Those who were lost during the genocide are cranes in their own way, unable to speak of the horrors that happened, and it is the responsibility of the living to give them a voice. The prerecorded backing track includes testimonies by genocide survivors, recordings from the genocide era of Armenian folk songs, and a poem from investigative journalist David Barsamian in response to the question "Why is it important to talk about the Armenian Genocide 100 years later?"

Bombs of Beirut (2014)
Commissioned by Kronos Quartet for Under 30 Project
amplified string quartet, audio playback, live processing / 22'30"

1. Before the War
2. The War
3. After the War

Lebanon, once the refuge where my grandparents and great-grandparents sought safety from the Armenian Genocide, became the dangerous home my parents and brother were forced to abandon during the Lebanese Civil War (1975-1990). We often read stories and see images in the news about violent events in the Middle East, but we very rarely get to hear the perspective of an individual who lived through them. Inspired by loved ones who grew up during the Lebanese Civil War, it is my hope that Bombs of Beirut provides a sonic picture of what day-to-day life is like in a turbulent Middle East –– not filtered through the news and media, but through the real words of real people. The prerecorded backing track includes interviews with family and friends who shared their various experiences living in a time of war; it also presents sound documentation of bombings and attacks on civilians tape-recorded on an apartment balcony between 1976-1978.​
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This Should Feel Like Home (2013)
CommissionED by Carnegie Hall for Hotel Elefant
flute, alto flute, clarinet, bass clarinet, percussion, piano, electric guitar, violin, viola, cello, contrabass, audio playback, live processing / 20'13

1. Eyes on Ararat
2. Soviet Shadows
3.   They Come to Drink and Pray
4.   The Ground Beneath
5.   Removed from Yerevan
6.   This Small Tribe
7.   Mer Hayrenik (Our Fatherland)

The idea of returning to my ancestral homeland had been engrained in me since childhood, so when I took my first trip to Armenia in 2012, my expectations were extraordinary. My homecoming experience was everything I was told it would be­ – emotional, strengthening, a feeling of immense connection to the beautiful land and the generously warm people. It was also sobering – harshly exposing the current economic state of Armenia’s citizens, the younger generation’s mass migration to escape extreme poverty and limited opportunity, political corruption, and the lingering remains of the Soviet influence on a nation that only recently gained independence. I gazed upon Mt. Ararat, an adopted symbol of the country, now behind Turkish borders, and felt the weight of the Armenian Genocide on this small country, now almost 100 years later.
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Dandelion [for Andie Springer] (2010)
Commissioned by Andie Springer, film by Nikolai Antonie
violin, audio playback, film / 9'

Just as the seeds of a dandelion, a symbol attached to childhood innocence and play, are carried to destinations unknown, Dandelion comments on how the standard repertoire of violinist Andie Tanning Springer's youth influences her contemporary musicality that is strongly focused on the experimental and avant-garde. The prepared electronics sample extracted audio from home videos of Springer's childhood recitals. The manipulated video is prepared by artist Nikolai Antonie.
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2 Suitcases (2010, revised 2017)
Commissioned by The Los Angeles New Music Ensemble
​Rearranged for Eighth Blackbird
Version 1: violin, cello, bass clarinet, piano, audio playback / 9'
Version 2: Flute, clarinet, piano, vibraphone, violin, cello, audio playback / 9'

Dedicated to my parents, with words spoken in Arabic, Armenian, and English 2 Suitcases is in dedication to my parents' immigration story, as they settled in San Francisco from the Lebanese Civil War with only their 1 year old son and two suitcases.
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Odaraganeen Sharagan [Stranger's Song] (2004)
soprano, flute, alto flute, bass clarinet, violin, cello, double bass, percussion, audio playback / 14'30"

A self-examination as an Armenian detached from her ethnicity's culture as a product of being raised in the United States. A study of the Armenian People's alienation from their heritage and homeland as a product of genocide.
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Header photo by Dominica Eriksen