Photo Credit: Lembit Beecher, Karen Ouzounian & KAUFMAN MUSIC CENTER
Grammy-nominated Armenian-Canadian cellist and composer Karen Ouzounian and her husband, Rome Prize-winning Estonian-American composer, pianist and animator Lembit Beecher, give the NYC premiere of their new program Mayrig (“mother” in Armenian). This immersive and intimate 65-minute show is centered on the human voice and features cello, electronics, piano and vocals. The voices of Ouzounian’s mother and grandmother are interwoven with original arrangements of Armenian music of her family’s past home of Anatolia, songs and stories drawn 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 expand upon themes of generational transmission, rootedness and uprootedness, with music teeming with passion and celebration, resilience and rage. Opening and closing the program is Marin Marais’s Les Voix Humaines, music from hundreds of years ago providing a window into the present. Featuring projections of original, newly-commissioned artwork by Charles Berberian.
