Before his new album announced for August 30, pianist Tigran Hamasyan shares the beautiful “Areg and Manushak” in a documentary clip

The Armenian pianist has posted a clip online in which he presents the new piece from his next album “The Bird of a Thousand Voices” and evokes the Armenian tale that he adapted for his album. The opportunity to discover the images of a splendid illuminated manuscript from which he drew his inspiration.

Two years later StandArt, a previous album devoted to jazz classics, Tigran Hamasyan dives back into his millennial Armenian culture, but also into his rock passions, via a new opus to be released on August 30 on the Naïve label, The Bird of a Thousand Voices (The Bird of a Thousand Voices). This long-term conceptual disc (24 pieces) was composed based on an Armenian mythological tale transmitted by oral tradition and transcribed at the beginning of the 20th century.

The hero of this legend crosses invisible realms in search of a mythical bird whose divine song has the power to bring harmony to the world.

In the clip posted online Friday May 31, Tigran Hamasyan highlights the song Areg and Manushak, a theme which illustrates the love story between a prince, Areg, and a young woman, Manushak (Violette). This melodious and wordless piece, carried by the crystalline voice of Areni Agbabian, a singer long associated with the pianist’s artistic projects, invites us into a dreamlike, medieval and mystical world.

In the document below, half-clip, half-documentary, Hamasyan describes the genesis of his project, the tale The Bird of a Thousand Voices discovered in 2019, which immediately made him want to write music. With researcher Arusyak Tamrazyan, he invites us to discover very old Armenian illuminated manuscripts, decorated with magnificent birds… He questions the links that exist between these stories and the tale that had such an impact on him (see French transcription of all comments at the bottom of the article).

The fate of the prince and Manoushak is determined by “a prophecy that Areg was warned about by a wise old man at a crossroads between our material world and the unseen realm”, can we read in the press release. “He embodies the temptations of Areg and the sacrifice he must make during his great quest to find and bring back the divine bird and its eternal song, in order to restore love and peace to the hearts of the people and to bring harmony to a world in turmoil.”

The mini-film was directed by Dutch filmmaker Ruben Van Leer who previously worked with Tigran Hamasyan on the stage design for Jazz à la Villette, in Paris, from the album Shadow Theater (2013), then on the videos of The Cave of Rebirth And Fides Tua, two gems from the album An Ancient Observer (2017).

The album The Bird of the Thousand Voices gives us to savor varied, haunting climates, according to the narration of the eponymous tale. So the opening piece, The Kingdom, put online on April 26 on YouTube, is of a completely different register than Areg and Manushak : it’s very rock.

A fan of Metal groups like Meshuggah and Tool, Tigran Hamasyan greedily fuses Armenian folklore, contemporary sounds and synthesizers.

With Ruben Van Leer as videographer, Tigran Hamasyan will give the world premiere of The Bird of a Thousand Voices, a transmedia musical project which must also be available in cinematic fiction video clips and an online game.

In France, the new program will be presented at the start of the school year, Friday September 27, at the Philharmonie de Paris during days specially dedicated to Armenia. In the meantime, Tigran Hamasyan will perform the album’s repertoire The Call Within (2020) on Friday June 28 as part of the La Défense Jazz Festival.

French transcription of the video comments

Tigran Hamasyan : “I came across this Armenian tale in 2019, and it was such a powerful story, of epic proportions, that it immediately struck me and made me want to write music. For me, it’s really interesting to know if there are any connections between these medieval manuscripts and this folk tale, because there are a lot of images of birds. It could allude to this story and that’s what I want to find out. “

Dr. Arusyak Tamrazyan, researcher, director of the study group of medieval Armenian music in Matenadaran, Mashtots Institute for Research on Ancient Manuscripts in Yerevan : “Religious hymns are imaginative, creative appropriations of Christianity, of life, of love. It was expressed through hymn tradition, through prayer, through music. And you can find all these layers in the hymns medieval.

And also, these manuscripts are decorated with magnificent spiritualized, anthropomorphic birds. It’s like a treasure of our creative power, a treasure of our memory.”

Tigran Hamasyan : “It’s not just about the music. It’s a bigger process. And it’s a big inspiration, it leads to resurrecting this story from the ashes.”