Chronological / Works in Progress / Musical Documentary / Solo / Small Ensemble / Large Ensemble / Opera, Voice, Chorus / Orchestra / Theater and Dance / Fixed Media / Film / Video Library
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Published scores are available through Schott's PSNY. For unpublished scores, email [email protected]
Published scores are available through Schott's PSNY. For unpublished scores, email [email protected]
ADORATION (2019-WIP)
Commissioned by Beth Morrison Projects & Opera AMERICA
Opera: ensemble cast, amplified string quartet, audio playback / Evening Length
Commissioned by Beth Morrison Projects & Opera AMERICA
Opera: ensemble cast, amplified string quartet, audio playback / Evening Length
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.
Adoration is supported, in part, by an OPERA America Opera Grants for Female Composers Award, funded by the Virginia B. Toulmin Foundation, and an OPERA America Project Repertoire Development Grant.
Adoration is supported, in part, by an OPERA America Opera Grants for Female Composers Award, funded by the Virginia B. Toulmin Foundation, and an OPERA America Project Repertoire Development Grant.
Paper Pianos (2016-WIP)
Commissioned by Alarm Will Sound/ in residence at EMPAC / in collaboration with director and writer Nigel Maister and projection artist Kevork Mourad
Amplified sinfonietta, audio playback, film, staging/ 90'
Commissioned by Alarm Will Sound/ in residence at EMPAC / in collaboration with director and writer Nigel Maister and projection artist Kevork Mourad
Amplified sinfonietta, audio playback, film, staging/ 90'
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.
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
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.
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
WATER AND DUST (2020)
COMMISSIONED BY SAMUEL ADAMS & HELEN KIM
SOLO VIOLIN AND DANCE / 4'
COMMISSIONED BY SAMUEL ADAMS & HELEN KIM
SOLO VIOLIN AND DANCE / 4'
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.
DARLING (2020)
Commissioned by Helen Simoneau Danse, created in close collaboration with violinists Andie Tanning and Austin Wulliman, voice Mary Kouyoumdjian, CHOREOGRAPHED BY HELEN SIMONEAU
sampled voice and violins in fixed media audio playback/ 60'
Commissioned by Helen Simoneau Danse, created in close collaboration with violinists Andie Tanning and Austin Wulliman, voice Mary Kouyoumdjian, CHOREOGRAPHED BY HELEN SIMONEAU
sampled voice and violins in fixed media audio playback/ 60'
DARLING is a piece for dance that explores vulnerability and intimacy through the presence and absence of touch. The work also intends the audience to question their assumptions about the relationships between strength, power, gender and size. The score was created in close collaboration with violinist Austin Wulliman through sampling recordings of guided improvisation sessions.
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"Pleasures of Plenty" from Words on the Street (2018)
Commissioned by HERE Arts
soprano, piano/ 4'
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.
Red on Red (2017)
Written for Jordan Morley, choreographed by Jordan Morley
fixed media, dance / 10'
Written for Jordan Morley, choreographed by Jordan Morley
fixed media, dance / 10'
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The Heaviness of Air (2015)
Commissioned by The Charles and Joan Gross Foundation for Periapsis Music and Dance, choreographed by Helen Simoneau
amplified cello, audio playback / 5'
Commissioned by The Charles and Joan Gross Foundation for Periapsis Music and Dance, choreographed by Helen Simoneau
amplified cello, audio playback / 5'
A snapshot of what a few moments of living with limited movement could feel like.
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Header photo by Peter Peter Mueller / Featuring Helen Simoneau Danse's DARLING: Carlo Antonio Villanueva, Marielis Garcia, and Donovan Reed / Choreography by Helen Simoneau / Costume Design by Quinn Czejkowski