GRAMMY®-nominated Armenian-Canadian cellist and composer Karen Ouzounian and her husband Lembit Beecher give the New York premiere of Mayrig ("mother" in Armenian). This immersive and intimate 65-minute program, centered on the human voice, features cello, piano, electronics and vocals, along with projections of newly commissioned artwork by French illustrator Charles Berberian. The voices of Ouzounian’s mother and grandmother are interwoven with original arrangements of Armenian music from her family’s ancestral home of Anatolia, songs and stories from their post-genocide home of Lebanon, and the beloved music of Charles Aznavour. New compositions by Beecher, Layale Chaker, Nathalie Joachim, Niloufar Nourbakhsh and Ouzounian explore generational transmission, rootedness and uprootedness, with music teeming with passion and celebration, resilience and rage. Marin Marais’s Les Voix Humaines opens and closes the program, with music from hundreds of years ago providing a window into the present.
Program
Marin Marais — Les Voix Humaines
Lembit Beecher — Kitchen Table Conversations; Music for the Passing of Days; Green Line
Charles Aznavour — La Mamma
Karen Ouzounian — Songs of the Sap
Armenian songs arranged by Lembit Beecher and Karen Ouzounian
Projections of original artwork by Charles Berberian
Compositions by Beecher, Ouzounian, Layale Chaker, Nathalie Joachim, and Niloufar Nourbakhsh
Karen Ouzounian, cello, vocals, and co-creator
Lembit Beecher, piano, electronics, and co-creator