Music opens Armenian soul, history
04/09/2006
LA Daily News
Alex Dobuzinskis, Staff writer
alex.dobuzinskis@dailynews.com (818) 546-3304
GLENDALE - Performing the classics to open a window into the Armenian soul, the directors of the fledgling Dilijan chamber music series have chosen composers who offer turbulent life stories.
[...]
After Armenia's long history of being ruled by the Ottoman Empire and then the Soviet Union, the nation's composers are finally coming into their own, said Vatsche Barsoumian, a Glendale-based creator of the Dilijan series. And as Armenian composers create new music, the series is bringing their work to Southern California audiences.
"Now that (Armenia is) relatively independent," Barsoumian said, "we are trying to find out and experiment with sound that is closest to our heart and experiences as Armenians, without any impediments."
Dilijan, in its inaugural season, brings together small groups of musicians to play classical music, using the Colborn School of Music in downtown Los Angeles as a venue and operating out of the Glendale office of the nonprofit Lark Musical Society.
[...]
On April 21, in a show called "Armenian Genocide Commemoration," Pogossian and five other musicians will perform the last installment of the Dilijan series. The show comes a few days before the date when Armenians mark the 1915 deportations and killings in the Ottoman Empire that claimed the lives of an estimated 1.5 million Armenians.
One of the pieces chosen for the evening is a work by the Armenian priest and composer Komitas. He was deported by the Ottoman Turks in 1915 and narrowly escaped death, but the experience put him in an insane asylum and he died a few years later.
The April 21 show will also feature work by the living Armenian composer Tigran Mansurian, and the late French composer Olivier Messiaen's "Quartet for the End of Time," which was written in a German prison camp during World War II.
"Instead of bringing out the dark and tragic in the piece, basically Messiaen is singing the glory to God and it's an incredibly positive and life-affirming piece," Pogossian said.
[...]
For more information on the Dilijan chamber music series, go to www.dilijan.larkmusicalsociety.com.
Note: Above are excerpts from the article. The full article appears here. Clarifications and comments by me are contained in {}. Deletions are marked by [...]. The bold emphasis is mine.
LA Daily News
Alex Dobuzinskis, Staff writer
alex.dobuzinskis@dailynews.com (818) 546-3304
GLENDALE - Performing the classics to open a window into the Armenian soul, the directors of the fledgling Dilijan chamber music series have chosen composers who offer turbulent life stories.
[...]
After Armenia's long history of being ruled by the Ottoman Empire and then the Soviet Union, the nation's composers are finally coming into their own, said Vatsche Barsoumian, a Glendale-based creator of the Dilijan series. And as Armenian composers create new music, the series is bringing their work to Southern California audiences.
"Now that (Armenia is) relatively independent," Barsoumian said, "we are trying to find out and experiment with sound that is closest to our heart and experiences as Armenians, without any impediments."
Dilijan, in its inaugural season, brings together small groups of musicians to play classical music, using the Colborn School of Music in downtown Los Angeles as a venue and operating out of the Glendale office of the nonprofit Lark Musical Society.
[...]
On April 21, in a show called "Armenian Genocide Commemoration," Pogossian and five other musicians will perform the last installment of the Dilijan series. The show comes a few days before the date when Armenians mark the 1915 deportations and killings in the Ottoman Empire that claimed the lives of an estimated 1.5 million Armenians.
One of the pieces chosen for the evening is a work by the Armenian priest and composer Komitas. He was deported by the Ottoman Turks in 1915 and narrowly escaped death, but the experience put him in an insane asylum and he died a few years later.
The April 21 show will also feature work by the living Armenian composer Tigran Mansurian, and the late French composer Olivier Messiaen's "Quartet for the End of Time," which was written in a German prison camp during World War II.
"Instead of bringing out the dark and tragic in the piece, basically Messiaen is singing the glory to God and it's an incredibly positive and life-affirming piece," Pogossian said.
[...]
For more information on the Dilijan chamber music series, go to www.dilijan.larkmusicalsociety.com.
Note: Above are excerpts from the article. The full article appears here. Clarifications and comments by me are contained in {}. Deletions are marked by [...]. The bold emphasis is mine.
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