INTERVIEW: TIGRAN: THE BRIGHT NEW ARMENIAN PIANO STAR OPENS THE LONDON JAZZ FESTIVAL
The Arts Desk
Nov 6 2012
Tigran Hamasyan is a brilliant jazz pianist who is clearly on the
rise – for one thing, like many a star before him, he has dropped
his surname, and is now, according to his latest record The Fable,
simply Tigran. When I meet him in London, he tells me one reason he
became addicted to the acoustic piano as a child was that there were so
many blackouts in his native Gyumri in Armenia, and it was something
he could play by candlelight. When he was 18 months old, in December
1988, there was a terrible earthquake in the region. When the Soviet
Union collapsed the next year, Armenia went to war with neighbouring
Azerbaijan over disputed territory and there was a blockade.
Tigran’s parents – his father was a jeweller and his mother a clothing
designer – would queue at five in the morning for hours for bread of
dubious quality. “When the electricity came on, my sister would start
crying as it was so unusual,” he recalls. The first music he fell in
love with in the middle of this post-apocalyptic atmosphere was heavy
metal, and he says he still loves Meshuggar, the Swedish Death Metal
band (authors of “the heaviest songs ever written – rhythmically,
it’s insane”) as much as Ravel or Thelonious Monk.
He was enrolled at a classical school aged five. “For years it was
just a chore. My mum made me practise, but as soon she turned away
I started improvising and coming up with cheesy songs.” While most
classical musicians don’t improvise “it was my thing, I didn’t even
know what jazz was. For me improvising is the deepest music, it’s where
everything starts.” In his teens, a jazz-loving uncle introduced him
to pianists like Fats Waller. Tigran has a hand-span which reaches
from C to the E flat an octave-and-a-bit above, which makes it that
much easier to play the minor, melancholy chords that infuse his music.
When he was 16, his parents moved to Los Angeles to give their two
children (Tigran’s sister is a painter and sculptor) better artistic
opportunities. Tigran began to win a series of piano competitions
and met saxophonist Ben Wendell and drummer Nate Wood, who still play
with him today.
The other reason you can tell Tigran is on a vertiginous ascent is
that fellow jazz pianists like Herbie Hancock, Chick Corea and Brad
Mehldau have all raved about him, and he recently made his TV debut
on Later With Jools (when was the last time you saw solo jazz piano
on that programme?) He was even played on theartsdesk radio show.
His last album The Fable (see video, next page), is mainly solo piano,
with snatches of singing and humming, and is an immensely poised
masterwork with sparkling melodies, veering between introspective
romanticism and expansive virtuosity. Of all his albums, this one
has the most of his native Armenian influence. There’s a take of
the standard “Someday My Prince Will Come” and an Armenian medieval
hymn, with most of the rest being new compositions, improvising
around Armenian scales, which gives the whole a certain mysterious
East-West quality.
Geoff Dyer in his jazz book But Beautiful suggests that the future of
jazz will come from such fusions of culture, and this is an exemplary
specimen. One of the most enigmatically beautiful tracks is “The
Spinner”, a hauntingly melodic composition by the mystic (and conman,
depending on your point of view) George Gurdjieff arranged by Thomas
de Hartmann (see video, next page). Gurdjieff, the author of Meetings
With Remarkable Men, would hum his tunes to the pianist Hartmann;
for Tigran it is “absolutely timeless, incredible music.” Tigran
says he believes in God, and like his musical “gods” Herbie Hancock
and Wayne Shorter is also interested in Buddhism. Of his spiritual
search he says “Every time I think about it I realise I know nothing.”
Now he is becoming an international star, he is feted back in Armenia,
but is depressed by the Armenian pop music – “Some of the songs
include Armenian instruments, but it’s really rubbish.” He does rate
the other best known musician in Armenia, Djivan Gasparian (who plays
the oboe-like duduk), who he says has “bardic” qualities.