InnerTimeSpace: Anatolian/Armenian roots and the music of Paul Motian, Komitas a.o.

FRI 13 DEC 2013, PIANOLAB FESTIVAL PARADOX, TILBURG (NL)

Vahé Hovanesian · duduk, Jan Bang · live sampling, Keiko Shichijo, Stevko Busch · piano, Tom Arthurs · trumpet, Samuel Rohrer · drums
1. Vahé Hovanesian
2. Keiko Shichijo – solo piano

Komitas Vardapet – Six Dances

3. Keiko Shichijo duo with Vahé Hovanesian
4. Tom Arthurs (trumpet), Jan Bang (electronics), Stevko Busch (piano), Samuel Rohrer (drums) – with Vahé Hovanesian – duduk

On the music of Paul Motian, Komitas Vardapet, own work

With Pianolab, Stevko Busch has been creating space for a wide variety of piano music since 2006, from classical to contemporary composed and improvised.

The new program of Gallery of Tones has as its starting point and orientation the unique way of playing and sound of the American percussionist and jazz legend Paul Motian, who came into contact with music from this country through his Armenian parents. Motian, a phenomenal listener with a deep musical memory, created with his playing in a special way open spaces in which deeper layers of the musical memory were addressed and unlocked so that sources could take shape and become pure in their own lived form. In it, Western, Afro-American and Eastern sources came together in a unique way.

Komitas

The composer Komitas Vardapet collected the traditional music of Armenia – thirty years before Béla Bartòk in Hungary – and put it to paper in compositions for piano, orchestra or choir. In her performance of Komitas’s Six Dances for Piano , the Japanese pianist Keiko Shichijo brings the traditional playing techniques that the composer incorporated into this piece back to life.

“Under her hands, the instrument produced a purity of sound, truly breathtaking. Her whole appearance breathes purity, and so does her intensity while playing” (audience reaction on Keiko Shichijo)

German pianist Stevko Busch sums up the Eastern and Western playing styles in his group. From the point of departure and orientation, the musicians involved explore intersections of Eastern and Western sounds, interpreting and improvising with Eastern and Western colourings, phrasing and timing. Through the possibilities of liquefying, repeating, distorting and moving in space, Jan Bang’s live electronics play a central role. The Dutch-Armenian Vahé Hovanesian represents the Eastern side of wind instruments with the Armenian oboe, the duduk with its penetrating sound, and the rising British trumpeter from Berlin, Tom Arthurs, the Western side. And last but not least, there is the well-known Swiss percussionist Samuel Rohrer from Berlin, who, like the electronic musician, plays a central role in connecting and igniting disparate sound worlds.

Vahé Hovanesian