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    Categories: 2023

Local composer’s ‘An Armenian Trilogy’ documentary to premiere on DPTV

March 8 2023
PUBLISHED: March 8, 2023 at 12:07 p.m. | UPDATED: March 8, 2023 at 12:08 p.m.

Dan Yessian released “The Freedom, The Fear and The Faith: An Armenian Trilogy” nearly eight years ago, and it’s remained a high point in a career that’s full of awards and achievements.

In 2014 the Farmington Hills-based composer was asked by his church priest to write a piece commemorating the centennial of the genocide in which 1.5 million Armenian families were murdered by the Turkish Ottomans. Yessian created an evocative three-movement, 22-minute duet between piano and violin, composed on one of the late Burt Bacharach’s old pianos. It was performed in 2017 by the Armenian Philharmonic and became the subject of a documentary by Yessian that will have its broadcast premiere at 7:30 p.m. Sunday, March 12, on Detroit Public Television (Channel 56).

“My objective was to musically interpret the feelings of my grandparents, whose stories reflected their escape from Turkey,” explains Yessian, 78, founder of Yessian Music, which also has offices and studios, run by his sons, in New York, Los Angeles and Hamburg, Germany. And while most of his composing work is shorter form for commercial clients, “An Armenian Trilogy” allowed him to stretch himself beyond that.

“This is the culmination of all my musical experience,” Yessian notes. “It was quite a feat for me in trying to make something interesting enough that would portray what (the genocide) was — which I never thought I’d be capable of doing. So this is something I could leave for my family, and for posterity, per se. It’s a passion.”

Yessian will appear during Sunday’s broadcast of the documentary, interviewed by DPTV’s Fred Nahat. The “Trilogy” itself is available via Amazon, iTunes and Spotify.

Emil Lazarian: “I should like to see any power of the world destroy this race, this small tribe of unimportant people, whose wars have all been fought and lost, whose structures have crumbled, literature is unread, music is unheard, and prayers are no more answered. Go ahead, destroy Armenia . See if you can do it. Send them into the desert without bread or water. Burn their homes and churches. Then see if they will not laugh, sing and pray again. For when two of them meet anywhere in the world, see if they will not create a New Armenia.” - WS