Mary Kouyoumdjian
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Photo still from 'Silent Cranes'

MARY KOUYOUMDJIAN / composer
​PORTFOLIO

mary@marykouyoumdjian.com
Thank you for considering my application for the visiting appointment at the Jacobs School of Music. Here is my portfolio of recent works – all of which implement musical documentary as a method to explore relevant social and political issues, and most of which incorporate my long-standing practice of working with electronics and multimedia. I have included four completed works, as well as Paper Pianos, an evening-length live documentary work-in-progress with Alarm Will Sound that has been the focus on my compositional attention over the past four years. Thank you for taking the time to become acquainted with my work, for your thoughtful listening, and for considering me as a candidate for your composition faculty.

/ works

Silent Cranes (2015)
Commission / Kronos Quartet, projection art by Laurie Olinder, poetry by David Barsamian, electronics by Mary Kouyoumdjian
Intermedia work for amplified string quartet, electronic playback, live processing / 30'
Premiere: 04/25/15 at 
Armenian National Academic Theatre of Opera and Ballet in Yerevan, Armenia
In connected movements:
  1. slave to your voice (02:17)
  2. you did not answer (11:33)
  3. [with blood-soaked feathers] (17:17)
  4. you flew away (28:30)
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?"

Folk Songs: Groung (Crane) performed by Komitas Vardapet/Armenak Shah Muradian and Andouni (Homeless) performed by Komitas Vardapet in Paris, France, 1912 (courtesy of Traditional Crossroads); Groung (Crane) performed by Zabelle Panosian in Harlem, New York, 1916 (courtesy of Tompkins Square)
 
Survivor Testimonies: Araxie Barsamian, Bishop Hagop, Victoria Mellian, (courtesy of David Barsamian); Haig Baronian, Aghavnie Der Sarkissian, Elise Hagopian Taft, Nium Sukkar, (courtesy of the Armenian Film Foundation); Azniv Guiragossian (interviewed by Taleen Babayan and the composer)

​Score

Watch below (private link)

This Should Feel Like Home (2013)
Commission / Carnegie Hall for Hotel Elefant, electronics by Mary Kouyoumdjian
Flute, alto flute, clarinet, bass clarinet, percussion, piano, electric guitar, violin, viola, cello, contrabass, electronic playback, live processing / 20'
Premiere: 11/20/2013 at Zankel Hall at Carnegie Hall in New York, NY
In connected movements:
  1. Eyes on Ararat (00:00)
  2. Soviet Shadows (02:38)
  3. They Come to Drink and Pray (04:37)
  4. The Ground Beneath (06:35)
  5. Removed from Yerevan (10:40)
  6. This Small Tribe (13:32)
  7. Mer Hayrenik (Our Fatherland) (17:34)
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.

​Score

Bombs of Beirut (2014)
Commission / Kronos Quartet 
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.

​Score
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Mustard Sweatshirts Are Forever (2019)
Commissioned by Roomful of Teeth and American Composers Forum for 10th Anniversary at MASS MoCA
Amplified Vocal Octet/ 10'

Premiere: 08/23/19 at MASS MoCA in North Adams, MA

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. 

​Score

/ WORK IN PROGRESS
Paper Pianos (2016-present) 
Commission / Alarm Will Sound, electronics by Mary Kouyoumdjian
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/ 20' excerpt of 120' work in progress

Excerpt workshop: 02/2018 St. Louis, MO
The development and performance of Paper Pianos is supported, in part, through the National Endowment for the Arts; a Pacific Harmony Foundation commission grant; 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; 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.

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.

Milad Yousufi fled to New York from Kabul, where he lived under the Taliban’s threat for pursuing music. His story of painting 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 US. The testimonies of these men and women, recounted to Kouyoumdjian and Maister in field recordings they made in New York and Rochester, form the basis of a narrative that is integrated into the live musical performance. Paper Pianos further incorporates the extraordinary hand drawings of Kevork Mourad which animate the narrative, evoke the journeys of the participants, and serve as a physical element with which Alarm Will Sound’s musicians interact.
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Kouyoumdjian’s score uses the recorded voices as integral compositional elements, and draws on  folk-music and contemporary-music practices. She says: “I come from refugee parents forced to immigrate to the U.S. as a consequence of the Lebanese Civil War. And my parents come from refugee parents forced to escape to Lebanon from Turkey during the Armenian genocide of 1915. Experiences like Milad Yousufi’s resonate with me, and topics of wartime, genocide, and one’s relationship to ‘home’ have played a large role in my music.”

In July 2016, Alarm Will Sound performed a first, ten-minute movement of Paper Pianos entitled “You are not a kid” at the Mizzou International Composers Festival in Columbia, MO.

Paper Pianos is a vivid, compelling and evocative contemplation of global issues expressed through individual stories of loss and transcendence. The live performance of narrative, music, theatricality and visual gesture engages audiences viscerally in one of the pressing problems of today’s world, distilled down to the heartfelt immediacy of real-life experience.

Score

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WORKSHOP RECORDING


​TRAILER
© COPYRIGHT 2017. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
  • home
  • about
  • projects
    • chronological
    • works in progress
    • musical documentary
    • solo
    • small ensemble
    • large ensemble
    • opera/voice/chorus
    • orchestra
    • theater/dance
    • fixed media
    • film
    • video library
  • press
  • discography
  • events
  • contact