InnerTimeSpace: Harry Tavitian – solo,
and duo with Vahé Hovanesian

SUN 19 SEP 2013, PIANOLAB FESTIVAL at BIMHUIS, AMSTERDAM (NL)

Harry Tavitian · piano, Vahé Hovanesian duduk

“The most interesting contemporary Romanian jazzman”. (International Herald Tribune).

One of Austria’s leading critics said, “Tavitian is among the remarkable pianists who have developed a musical idiom that could be described as ‘Eastern European New Jazz’. From the mid-1970s onwards, he has created a strong personal and syncretic style, creating broad skylines”.
Richard Schuberth, Radio ORF

Born in Constanta, Romania in 1952 to Armenian parents, Tavitian began playing classical piano at the age of 6. He graduated The Academy of Music in Bucharest. In 1970 he saw bluesman Memphis Slim in concert. This was a major influence in his future career. After this event, he started singing and playing the blues and soon he made his first steps in jazz. In 1976 he gave up classical music completely for jazz. From the end of the ’70s Tavitian became the leader of the avantguarde movement in Romanian jazz and in the ’80s his music was keeping perfect time with the most advanced concepts of European vanguard. Tavitian played an active part in the bursting of the national schools of jazz in Eastern Europe despite Romania’s political isolation of the communist dictatorship. Tavitian’s music is open towards multiple influences. He made a style of his own recreating everything through his own personality. His music is a synthesis between free-jazz, the spiritual area of The Balkans and The Caucasus, contemporary chamber music, blues, mediaeval music.

Press on Tavitian

„Tavitian – the freshness of The East”. (L’Alsace / France)
„A captivating blend of free-jazz and Oriental folklore”. (Jazz Podium / Germany)
„Harry Tavitian is not only an outstanding pianist, but a master of improvisation, a bursting showman and a very inspired bandleader” (Jurnalul Bihorean / Romania)

„There are many solo pianists in jazz but Tavitian is quite unique, despite the presence of obvious influences from the jazz world outside Balkan territory. Tavitian’s use of themes from Romanian and Hungarian music history, stretching back centuries, is certainly among the best manipulations of Balkan music in existence, created and carried out with intense love and care, superb technique, and an unmatched sense of drama, a man simply bursting with music from the inside out.”
Eugene Chadbourne – USA, op www.allmusic.com.