“Our goal was to write a piece that feels like an intimate family story, told quietly, and yet also containing the wide expanse of universal emotions and history,” says Grammy-nominated composer and cellist Karen Ouzounian of Dear Mountains. In 2021, Ouzounian conducted a series of interviews with her mother, father and grandmother on her family history. “The spine of the piece is my grandmother’s life story—growing up in the Armenian survivor community in Lebanon, two orphan Armenian boys being cared for by her family, her eventually becoming a prodigious and sought-after dressmaker,” she says. Ouzounian and Lembit Beecher, her husband and Dear Mountains co-creator, try to capture Ouzounian’s grandmother in the work: “The text maintains the poetry of her natural turns of phrase, and echoes her particular vocal inflections or draws from her physical energy,” says Ouzounian.

Dear Mountains—a nine-movement oratorio for chorus, solo cello, oud and percussion—takes the audience through vignettes of the Armenian diaspora over the past 100 years, from 1920s New York, to 1930s California, 1940–’60s Beirut, and Toronto in the 2020s. Ouzounian and Beecher draw on formal and informal interviews, archival research and imagined versions of Anatolian Armenian dances. They ask:  “How can we approach the emotional world of the past—not dates and figures, but the way things felt?”

Ouzounian and Rome Prize-winning composer, pianist and animator Beecher have collaborated for the past 15 years, but Dear Mountains is their first co-composed work. “It was borne out of an utterly trusting, joyful and generous process,” says Ouzounian. “The piece is drawn from a history that is incredibly painful, and incredibly precious to me and my family, so it was very important to be able to work with someone with whom I could fully experience the intense emotional world of the piece, and have those core emotions guide the creative process.”

Dear Mountains will be performed on Nov. 20 at Toronto’s Koerner Hall. Joining Ouzounian on cello are Ara Dinkjian on oud, Philip Mayer on percussion and the Amadeus Choir led by Kathleen Allan. It will be paired with John Hodian’s excerpts from Songs of Exile and Songs of Wisdom, performed by the Naghash Ensemble. Hodian’s works blend medieval Armenian poetry by Mkrtich Naghash, Armenian folk song and new classical music. “Naghash’s language addresses both the elite and the underprivileged, and stresses that no matter who we are, we are all headed for the same ‘home,’ meaning the afterlife,” says Hodian.

Ouzounian and Beecher will return to Toronto on April 18 for a concert of Mayrig, presented by Music Toronto. Mayrig, meaning “mother” in Armenian, melds the voices of Ouzounian’s mother and grandmother, songs and stories from Anatolia and Lebanon, reimagined Armenian music, contemporary works and graphic illustrations by Charles Berberian.

Naghash Ensemble, Karen Ouzounian and the Amadeus Choir perform Dear Mountains at Toronto’s Koerner Hall on Nov. 20. www.rcmusic.com/performance

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