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 For unpublished scores, email [email protected]

I Haven't the Words (2020) 
String quartet arrangement commissioned by Kronos Quartet / 5'30"
Version 1: Piano solo also available
​Version 2: String Quartet

A sonic journal entry

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 

"Pleasures of Plenty" from Words on the Street (2018)
Commissioned by HERE Arts
soprano, piano/ 4'

A hybrid-musical theater work of music by composer Matt Marks and poet Anna Robinowitz, in which several composers were asked to come together to complete the score that had been left unfinished after Matt's passing. Words on the Street is a mystery show in which all of humanity is complicit. 

to open myself, to scream (2017)
Commission by Music of Remembrance, in collaboration with projection artist Kevork Mourad
clarinet, trumpet, violin, cello, contrabass, audio playback, and film / 30'

i. I dream of living
ii. We were ashamed
iii. In the shadows of a smoking crematorium
iv. Auschwitz is only sleeping

to open myself, to scream is a portrait piece on Romani artist, writer, musician, and Holocaust survivor Ceija Stojka. What draws me to Stojka’s work are her themes of longing for the past and coping with the aftermath of unimaginable trauma. As a granddaughter of Armenian genocide survivors, such themes felt familiar to me within my own culture and family history, and these are common themes in other cultures that have and are continuing to experience mass exterminations. I am a firm believer in the arts as a medium for change, and I hope to continue the conversation about how we sympathize with those who experience the unimaginable, and how we can pull from the past to move forward.
 
Each movement is inspired by various paintings of Stojka’s – from her paintings that celebrate her free and vibrant Romani life, to those that explore the horrific experiences she endured during the Holocaust. Composed for mixed ensemble and electronic track, the music often integrates elements of folk music within a contemporary musical language. The ensemble members play amplified with prerecorded samples of themselves – performing in the present while engaging with the past. Inspired by Stojka’s fond memories of her mother, who would calm her with her singing, a distant and intangible voice presents itself throughout the work. The music alternates between polarities of bliss and tragedy, in an effort to understand Stojka’s unique perspective, and draws on imagery related to family, community, nature, the seasons, fear, nakedness, and shame. The piece and movements are titled after Stojka’s own words.
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Mary Kouyoumdjian · to open myself, to scream (Perf. by Music of Remembrance)

"Where Once" from Gorky (2016)
Libretto by Royce Vavrek / written for loadbang
​baritone voice, bass clarinet, trumpet, trombone, electronic playback / 10'

An imagined monologue for Arshile Gorky as he is painting his mother’s likeness in “The Artist and his Mother.”  The lyrics are constructed from imagined memories, and contain a sense of poetic revisionism, functioning like a eulogy for the greatest loss of Gorky’s young life.  Through the aria we get to see Gorky’s psychological process as he symbolically returns his mother to the familiar landscape of Lake Van.
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For Audrey (2015)
Commissioned by Audrey Q. Snyder / In collaboration with filmmaker XUAN
cello, piano, and film / 5'

Dedicated to cellist and dear friend Audrey Q. Snyder. For the New Music//New Film initiative, with film (in progress) by Xuan.

Children of Conflict: "A Boy and a Makeshift Toy" (2015)
Commissioned by Michael Hall
viola, piano / 10'

Inspired by the work of American Pulitzer-nominated war photographer Chris Hondros, who captured images of children in wars around the world, the Children of Conflict series is a collection of sonic portraits based off of Hondros' intimately revealing photography with hopes to continue the storytelling and dialogue of his work prompts. "A Boy and a Makeshift Toy" is a portrait of a young boy playing in an abandoned train station, full of Albanian reugees, waiting to be taken to another camp. During an 11-week bombing campaign in 1999, Serbians displaced more than 800,000 Albanians out of Kosovo.
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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?"

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Groung [Crane] (2014)
Commissioned by Kronos Quartet, arrangement
string quartet / 4'

Inspired by a recording from 1916 of Zabelle Panosian, a relatively unknown singer who had recently moved to Harlem, NY, of a version of the Armenian folk song "Groung (Crane)." In this song, the singer calls out to a crane, a common character in Armenian folklore and poetry, pleading for news from their country. Panosian's voice seems to carry the burden of her entire homeland with a beautiful and soulful interpretation of the melody, and in my own arrangement, the ensemble is asked to emulate her unique interpretation of the song. At the time Panosian recorded this piece in the States, the Armenians were going through genocide in Ottoman Turkey, and I find the timing of her recording to bring even more meaning to the music.
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Mary Kouyoumdjian · Groung (Perf. by Buffalo String Works)

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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Tagh [Diary] of an Immigrant (2013)
Commissioned by Ensemble Oktuplus
two violins, viola, cello, contrabass / 4'

An imagined journal entry by a hope-filled someone hungrily pushing towards immigration who finds themselves in strange and bittersweet stillness once that immigration is achieved. The Armenian word "tagh" translates to "diary."
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Children of Conflict: "Samar's Song" (2013)
Commissioned by Nicholas Gleason
violin, two percussionist, audio playback / 5'11"

Part of the Children of Conflict series, "Samar's Song" is a portrait piece of a young Samar Hassan during the Iraq War. At the age of five, when her family drove back from taking her ill brother to the hospital, U.S. soldiers opened fire on their car, making her parents civilian casualties in her full sight. This is inspired by a photograph taken by the late Pulitzer-nominated photographer Chris Hondros of Hassan screaming and covered in her parents' blood.
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I Am a Fish [A One-Act Opera] (2012)
Commissioned by Experiments in Opera, libretto by Hannis Brown
countertenor, piano, electric guitar, violin, contrabass, audio playback / 9'30"

A one-act opera that explores the possibilities and confines of what we perceive as reality. John Herrington has an epiphany one afternoon, while verbalizing the sounds of words, that he may or not be what he has always taken himself to be. He realizes that words are square pegs that fit in round holes. Is he a man because he calls himself a man? Or is he actually a woman? Perhaps he is a fish. - Hannis Brown (librettist)
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Dzov Yerku Kooynov [Sea of Two Colors] (2011)
Commission by American Composers Forum & Jerome Fund for Hotel Elefant
flute, clarinet, violin, cello, piano / 15'

1. Behind the Trees
2. House in Ruins

A portrait of Armenian composer Komitas Vardapet, who survived the Armenian Genocide. Upon release, Komitas spent 20 years and the remainder of his life in various psychiatric hospitals. A portrait of the deterioration of his mind. A portrait of the deterioration of his Armenian Culture.
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MOERAE [The Fates] (2010)
Commissioned by The Audio & Music Project
violin, cello, piano / 15'

1. Clotho
2. Lachesis
3. Atropos

Based off of the Greek mythological trio of women: "the fates"
i. Clotho [the spinner, who spins the thread of life]
ii. Lachesis [the measurer, who chooses the lot of life]
iii. Atropos [the cutter, who cannot be turned, who at death with her shears cuts the thread of life"
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Gantsreveh D'ghas [It is Raining My Son] (2010)
Commissioned by The Los Angeles New Music Ensemble
mezzo-soprano, clarinet, violin, cello, piano / 10'

Based off of the poem "Gantsreveh d'ghas" by Vahan Tekeyan, in which a mother consoles her son in his moment of heartbreak.

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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Ciel Brouillé [Cloudy Sky] (2010)
Commissioned by The Los Angeles New Music Ensemble
soprano, flute, clarinet, violin, cello, double bass, piano, turntable, audio playback / 6'

Based off of Charles Baudelaire's poem "Ciel Brouillé"

Turtledove (2006)
soprano saxophone, piano, vibraphone, marimba / 5'

 

A Little Elbow Grease (2006)
alto saxophone, piano, electric guitar, contrabass, drum kit / 5'

 

Llevara mi Silencio [Wear my Silence] II (2006)
string quartet / 4'

Based off of the poem "El niño mudo" by Federico García Lorca

Kaleidoscope (2004)
piano, electric guitar, contrabass, drum kit / 6'

 

Perspectives (2004)
string trio, audio playback / 8'

An alteration of initial perception after further exploration.
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The Place Between Lightning and Thunder (2003)
soprano, alto, 4 talking drums, marimba, paper, bodies / 5'

 

MamaBaba (2002)
piano, contrabass, drum kit, percussion / 5'

For my parents.
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Header photo by Dominica Eriksen; Hotel Elefant, Josh Perry, Andie Tanning, Nicholas Gleason