Author: Emil Lazarian

UKRAINE IS AZERBAIJAN’S RELATIVE: CRIME WAS AN AWARD TO UKRAINE
A1+
[08:36 pm] 14 September, 2006
Victor Yushchenco, president of the Ukraine, made a rough announcement
during his last visit to Azerbaijan on behalf of the Azeris. He said
that in his opinion the Karabakh conflict can be settled within the
territorial integrity and wholeness of Azerbaijan.
After this announcement RA Foreign Minsitry expressed our position
towards the Ukrainian authorities through the ambassador.
While answering the question of A1+, Foreign Minister Vartan Oskanian
said, “Though we are in close relations with the Ukraine, we still
counter problems in political sphere. The announcement of the Ukraine
President is inadmissible for us. We have told the Ukrainian side
about our position on this score. We assume such announcements pursuit
certain specific aims.”
Vahan Hovhannesyan, NA deputy speaker says he wasn’t caught unawares by
such announcement. “Khrushchov presented Unkraine with the Crime just
the way Stalin presented Azerbaijan with Nakhijevan and Karabakh. ”
Let us put Yushchenco aside. Tomorrow Putin, Bush and many other
presidents may come up with such announcements. In answer to our
question that Ukraine supplies Azerbaijan with weapons can this
violate the balance of powers in the region, Aram Sargsyan, member
of Democratic Party of Armenia, answered, “The Ukraine has supplied
them with weapons for a long time, even since the war and has got no
problems on this score.
We must blame ourselves as Armenia has taken no measures to prevent
it.”
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

OSKANIAN: MEETINGS OF ARMENIAN AND AZERI FMS SHOULD NOT BE END IN THEMSELVES
PanARMENIAN.Net
14.09.2006 16:35 GMT+04:00
/PanARMENIAN.Net/ The final terms of the meeting of Armenian and
Azeri FMs are not specified yet, Armenian Foreign Minister Vartan
Oskanian said. “Co-chairs of the OSCE MG for settlement of the conflict
seriously discuss the issue of a possible meeting of FMs.
However, our stance is that those meetings should not be an end in
themselves,” Oskanian told journalists in Yerevan Thursday. “We are
ready to meet at any time, however the atmosphere should be favorable
for discussing specific matters,” the FM added.
Azerbaijan makes every effort to distract attention from the Minsk
process, which is evidenced by inclusion of the issue on protracted
conflicts in the UN GA agenda, Oskanian believes. “Maybe Azerbaijan
wants to give up its agreement to the OSCE MG document, including
the referendum in NK and the self-determination principle by trying
to divert attention from the Minsk process to the UN,” the Minister
supposes. “Thus, our meeting is open to question before specification
of the processes in the UN,” Oskanian said. However, he did not rule
out the opportunity of holding a meeting, reports Novosti-Armenia.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

NEW COUNTRIES ADDED TO ACCUITY’S PAYMENT SOLUTIONS
bobsguide
September 2006
Accuity has implemented several updates to products within its
Payment Solutions line to enhance and streamline payment processing
operations and offer the most accurate data information available. The
most recent update is the inclusion of new country routing codes –
specifically Armenia, Georgia, Kyrgyzstan, Morocco, India, Mauritius,
South Africa, Namibia and Lesotho – in The Global Banking Resource
(TGBR) and Global Payment File products.
In addition, Accuity has incorporated Bulgaria and Mauritius financial
institution information, branch location addresses, as well as their
connected SWIFT/BICs to its IBAN solutions, including the IBAN File
by Accuity and IBAN Payment Resource. Bulgaria and Mauritius are the
43rd and 44th nations (respectively) to implement and participate in
the IBAN system for their payment routing standards.
The information contained within all of the products that compose
Accuity’s Payment Solutions is continually gathered, validated and
uploaded by a team of international data specialists and includes
elements such as national routing codes, SWIFT/BIC and CHIPS payment
codes, SSI’s, owners, credit ratings, Web addresses, e-mails, contact
data and branch networks.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

ARMENIAN CULTURE DAYS TO BE HELD IN SOCHI SEPTEMBER 14-16
PanARMENIAN.Net
14.09.2006 16:27 GMT+04:00
/PanARMENIAN.Net/ September 14-16 Armenian Culture Days will be held
in Sochi city of Krasnodar Territory, Russia. The State Academic Choir
of Armenia, led by People’s Artist of the USSR Hovhannes Chekijyan is
specially invited for the event, the Department of Culture of Sochi
Administration reported.
“The Choir is considered one of the best in the Republic. Its
repertoire includes George Handel, George Gershvin, Carl Orff,
Arno Babajanyan, Edgar Hovhannisyan, Hovhannes Chekijyan, as well as
classical compositions of Bach, Handel, Mozart, Beethoven, Rossini,
Schubert, Verdi, Tchaikovsky and contemporary Armenian music. For high
performance the Choir got the name of “Academic.” September 15-16
the State Academic Choir of Armenia will perform Requiem by Mozart,
reports Yuga.ru.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

ARMENIAN SOLIDARITY
contact: name: Eilian Williams
c/p The Temple of Peace, Cathays Park
Cardiff, Wales
Tel: 07876561398
Email: [email protected]
ARMENIA SOLIDARITY at the fringe of the Labour Conference, Manchester, England
(an offshoot of Wales-Armenia Solidarity c/o The Temple of Peace, Cardiff)
“Is it any wonder that the people of Darfur again face the prospect of
genocide, when the UK and US governments deny the truth of the first
genocide of the twenteeth century, namely the genocide of the Armenians?
Is it surprising that the world is today plagued by terrorrism, when the
British and American governments persist in denying the truth of the
Holocaust of the Armenians, the first example of state terrorism of the
twenteeth century?”
These questions will be raised by “Armenia Solidarity” at the Labour
Conference in Manchester. Encouraged by the overwhelming support given
by Welsh Labour MPs to the recent EDM in the Commons(1454, tabled by
Stephen Pound ) on the Assyrian and Armenian Genocides (in opposition to
government policy), campaigners for the genocide to be recognised
officially by the UK parliament see a window of opportunity in the next
few months for a motion in the Commons on Recognition to go forward for
an unprecendated vote.The loyal supporters of recognition who sign EDMs
annually on the issue are predominantly from the Left of the Party, but
campaigners hope to broaden support by means of three fringe meetings(
at the Armenian Taverna, Princess St (on Albert Sq). on sunday, the 24th
. and on tuesday , as well as on monday at Brannigans Pub, Peter St(all
meetings to start at 6.00 p.m.,)
“We know we shall be competing against fringe meetings on many other
pressing issues, but I hope people will realise that the Armenians have
been waiting for justice for 91 years. Also it is important to grasp
that it is the depth of the injustice, not the strength of the lobby
which should move governments to act.”said a spokeman.
The spokesman continued:.. : “The plain truth is that Turkey’s
present borders are based on the Genocide of her Armenian population.The
government denies this, and Minister at the Foreign Office Geoff Hoon
recently went as far as to deceive the Commons by implying that the
government had taken the advice of historians in deciding there was not
enough evidence for the Armenian Genocide. We know this to be a
mischevious deception as there are no reputable historians in the UK who
deny the truth of the Armenian Genocide”
.The Iran president’s Holocaust revisionism has now been matched by
a more callous genocide denial by the UK government.
Their position that there was no genocide in 1915 because Turkey is
today(as in the past) a strategic ally of the UK is not tenable.This
last denial is the fourth major betrayal of Armenia by Britain. The
first three were as follows:
1 British foreign policy in the nineteenth century of diminishing
Russian influence in the region (for Britain’s imperial self-interest)
led to the Armenians being exposed to the terrible massacres of 1894-96,
and ultimately the genocide of 1915..
2 To gain support for the war effort, Lloyd George in 1916 promised
that Armenia would never again have to suffer Turkish rule. This was
again a vain promise as the Turkish army was not disarmed in 1918, and
Britain refused to take up the mandate for an independent Armenia
following the treaty of Sevres.
3 At the end of the second world war, Britain opposed the return of land
to Armenia from Turkey, on the basis that ” There is no longer a
nationality problem in the region ” (Bevin in the Commons in 1946.) ie
The success of the genocide had, in the eyes of the British government,
entitled Turkey to keep the entirety of Western Armenia. This logic has
certainly encouraged many tyrants in the post-war era.
Contact Armenia-Solidarity: 07876561398 [email protected]
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

September 14, 2006
Press Release
Western Prelacy of the Armenian Apostolic Church of America
H.E. Archbishop Moushegh Mardirossian, Prelate
6252 Honolulu Avenue
La Crescenta, CA 91214
Tel: (818) 248-7737
Fax: (818) 248-7745
E-mail: [email protected]
Website: <; SUNDAY SCHOOL TEACHERS SEMINAR On Saturday, September 9, 2006, a seminar was held for Western Prelacy Sunday School teachers in preparation for the 2006-2007 academic year. The seminar, held under the auspices of and presided by H.E. Archbishop Moushegh Mardirossian, Prelate, and organized by the Prelacy Christian Education Department, took place at St. Mary's Church in Glendale from 2:00 to 6:00 p.m. Christian Education Department Directors Very Rev. Fathers Muron Aznikian and Barthev Gulumian participated in the seminar along with pastors and Sunday School directors and teachers. Following opening prayer and the singing of the Sunday School hymn, welcoming remarks were made by Mr. Hagop Chaghasspanian, Chairman of the Sunday School Central Council. The seminar was comprised of four sessions: (1) Presentation of projects and activities related to the feasts of each Sunday during the academic year. (2) Presentation of topics to be taught in September and October (prayers, psalms, hymns, feasts). (3) Instruction of special hymns relating to the Feasts of the Exaltation of the Cross and of the Holy Translators, which occur in September and October respectively. (4) Video presentation of stories and events of the Bible. A question and answer session followed each presentation. The Prelate commended the seminar, which gave participants the opportunity to voice concerns and plan future projects. Speaking of the endeavors of the Christian Education Department serving under the Prelacy, the Prelate reminded the teachers that new teaching aids would soon be released, including illustrations of Biblical stories and events, a monthly curriculum, and a CD of songs and hymns. The seminar concluded with the Sunday School hymn and prayer. From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

TURKISH FM CAUTIONS OVER POSSIBLE RIFT DURING FRENCH ‘YEAR OF ARMENIA’
Today.Az
13 September 2006 [20:14] – Today.Az
Turkish Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul’s visit to France to take part
in an intercultural dialog meeting coincides with the inauguration
of France’s “Year of Armenia.”
Noting that Turkey would not intervene in France’s relations with third
parties, Gul said that the Armenian issue would not harm bilateral
relations between Turkey and France, which have significantly improved
recently. In a press conference held in Paris, Gul, who first recalled
that more than 400,000 Turks live in France, said both France and
Turkey should take precautionary measures to prevent possible rifts
between the country’s Armenian and Turkish communities. Stressing
that Turkey’s E.U. membership bid had been used as a propaganda tool
in French domestic politics, Gul stated they respected pluralistic
democracy. To this end, Gul said, “Democracy has both weaknesses and
strengths; this is natural.”
Gul also said Turkey would initiate a comprehensive campaign in a
few months to convince the French public, which has been opposed
to Turkey’s E.U. membership, to accept Turkey. Stating that Turkey
attached great importance to its relations with France, Gul said:
“The views of France have been very important throughout Turkey’s
venture toward full membership. Turkey would have never begun
negotiation talks with the E.U. if French President Jacques Chirac
had not offered his support on Dec. 17.”
In response to a comment over France’s demand for a military base in
Cyprus, Gul noted with regard to the Cyprus issue that every country
should consider international treaties, adding: “France has interests,
and so does Turkey. When these are taken into account, common sense
will prevail.”
Meanwhile, at a press conference held at the French foreign ministry,
the country’s foreign minister responded harshly to an Armenian
reporter who asked whether it was a contradiction for France
to organize the “Year of Armenia” in France as Turkey prepared
celebrations for the “Year of France.” The French foreign minister
replied, “Cultural and political affairs should never be confused
with each other.”
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

MUSIC, A HEALING MEDIUM ON SO MANY DIFFERENT LEVELS
By Kaelen Wilson-Goldie
The Daily Star
Thursday, September 14, 2006
Musicians come to the rescue of war victims with benefit concert and CD
INTERVIEW
BEIRUT: “We felt that we were trapped,” says Ghazi Abdel Baki, as he
sits in the colorful seventh-floor headquarters of his production
house for documentaries, animations and music. The noontime sun is
filtering through fabric panels that loop down from the glass ceiling
of a rooftop office. The labyrinthine spaces of Forward Productions,
situated in the neighborhood of Sakiat al-Janzir, between Verdun
and Raouche, include recording studios and editing suites and rooms
stuffed with low-slung couches and pillows.
Abdel Baki, who is 36 going on 37 this month, is a drummer by training
and a composer and producer by trade. At present, he is recalling
the initial motivation that sparked “We Live … ,” a compilation by
Lebanese musicians created under the summer’s siege.
“We didn’t know where the horizon of this war was,” he explains,
meaning that while Israel was bombing Lebanon during the months of
July and August, no one knew when it would end.
“If we had known where the horizon was, we might have lived this period
differently,” adds Carol Mansour, Abdel Baki’s partner at Forward and
a documentary filmmaker with boundless energy and an impressive head
of auburn curls.
“Moving around the city was very difficult,” explains Abdel Baki. “And
the feeling was very difficult. In the beginning, we felt all our
projects had been halted in their tracks. It was very abrupt. There
was no build-up to this. We were not prepared for a war.
We had to shift from being productive people very quickly.”
Less than a week into the conflict, Abdel Baki and a handful of
musicians he has known and worked with for years decided to meet up at
the Blue Note Cafe on Makhoul Street, between Hamra and the American
University of Beirut, one of the longest-standing and most-fabled
music venues in Beirut.
Among them was Charbel Rouhana, one of Lebanon’s best known oud
players, who performs regularly at the Blue Note; bassist Abboud
Saadi, whom Abdel Baki describes as “the godfather of all the modern
musicians;” and Ziyad Sahhab, an up-and-coming oud player, singer and
composer, who, at 23, is set to release his second album on Forward
next month.
“The Blue Note is like our second home,” explains Abdel Baki. “And
it was one of the few places that was open at the time. We stayed
from noon until seven in the evening, just discussing things.”
A friend from Kuwait, Meshal al-Kandari, was also with them. A
marketing manager for mobile phones who writes poetry and, as it
turns out, song lyrics – he got stuck in Lebanon when the war broke
out. Beirut was meant to be a stopover on his way to the rather more
rollicking Spanish island of Ibiza.
At the end of that first and ultimately only Blue Note session, Abdel
Baki, Kandari and company left with a plan. Kandari would orchestrate
a benefit concert for Lebanon in Kuwait with Rouhana and a band of
musicians who would join them there from locations as far flung as
Armenia (Arthur Satyan) and Minnesota (Tom Hornig).
Abdel Baki would take tracks by all the musicians present and rework
them – in some cases re-record them – into the compilation that is
now complete, a copy sitting in its jewel case on a desk in Forward’s
office.
“Whatever needs to be done on the outside needs to be linked to people
on the inside,” says Abdel Baki, addressing a contentious issue that
has afflicted those working in all spheres of culture in Lebanon –
whether to create for an audience at home (showing solidarity) or
abroad (raising awareness).
Abdel Baki and Kandari embraced the debate and did both. For six
days in July, Abdel Baki worked on the CD. It wasn’t easy. After
that meeting at the Blue Note, many of the musicians holed up in
their respective hometowns. The proximity of the Forward studios
to the Israeli warships located off the coast of Beirut made for
particularly harrowing and disruptive acoustics.
“We had no electricity. Our morale was down. Here, you hear very well
the gunboats and in this glass structure,” he explains, one feels
palpably exposed to the threat of death.
Still, Abdel Baki, Rouhana, Saadi, Sahhab and Kandari managed to rework
and update the six tracks that now comprise “We Live … ” Kandari
added new lyrics to Rouhana’s “Loubnan Fawk Hamat al-Duniah.” Saadi
rejiggered a previously unrecorded, jazzy instrumental piece called
“Najwa’s Song.” Sahhab captured the mood of the time with a tracked
named “Safar,” the expression used when someone has traveled. Abdel
Baki messed around with a track slated for his upcoming album
“Communique #2,” a follow-up to his debut, “Communique #1.” The song
now carries the title “Under Siege.”
“Before the title was much more cynical,” he says.
What was it?
“Happy Citizen,” he smiles.
What is immediately striking about “We Live …” is that, considering
the circumstances under which it was produced, it is a far from
somber album. While not particularly cohesive in terms of style or
even quality – a compromise to context – it is resolutely energetic
and suitably manic.
“Beyond the bombing and all that is, in our opinion, being imposed
on us, we felt that we as musicians, we live,” says Abdel Baki. “Out
of total chaos musicians can still produce. That was the challenge,
and some people criticized us for this but the fact that we were
producing an album is itself [the point].”
As evidence of how technology kept people tethered together during
the war, Abdel Baki finished the album, “liquefied” the tracks by
converting them into MP3 files, enlisted a graphic designer in New
York to do the layout of the cover and the liner notes and then sent
everything to Kuwait, where Kandari, who had grabbed Rouhana and fled
Lebanon to make it on time to that benefit gig, set up a group called
Wafa (“loyalty” in Arabic) to produce the CD there.
Now, all proceeds from both the benefit concert and sales of the
CD are going directly to humanitarian aid and refugee relief groups
working on the ground and with the people in Lebanon. That in itself
posed an additional round of challenges.
Over the past month, much criticism has been leveled at the Lebanese
government’s Higher Relief Council (HRC) for inefficiency, ineptitude
and worse in terms of distributing aid.
Particularly in its documentary division, Forward carries a distinctly
progressive political bent – producing films about migrant labor in
Lebanon, for example. So Abdel Baki is well positioned to say he thinks
such criticism about the HRC is valid: “It’s totally politicized
and arbitrary,” he says. For this reason, the contributions from
“We Live …” are going directly to the people. “No bureaucracy,
no red tape,” Abdel Baki says. To keep this system transparent,
Kandari has created a blog to track the movement of funds.
The first edition of “We Live …” consists of 2,000 copies, and
Abdel Baki hopes to follow it up with a series of concerts
at Masrah al-Madina this fall. This is only a slight modification of
his original plans for the season.
“We’re two weeks behind, but October is still October,” he says,
stepping toward a door with a schedule of appearances taped to
it. “This is from before the war,” he says, running a finger down
the list. “This haunted us. This was a reminder to us every day.” It
seems to have worked.
“We Live … ” is available at CD-Theque, the Virgin Megastore
and online. For more information, please see or
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

BOOKS TOWERING INFERNO
By Greg Goldin
LA Weekly, CA
Wednesday, September 13, 2006 – 12:00 pm
Frank Lloyd Wright and the Taliesin Fellowship
Illustration by Mitch Handsone On the last page of The Fellowship:
The Untold Story of Frank Lloyd Wright & the Taliesin Fellowship, we
are told that without the Greco-Armenian mystic Georgi Gurdjieff, there
“very likely” would have been no Fallingwater, no Johnson Wax building,
no Guggenheim Museum. This claim is bold, and something new. Frank
Lloyd Wright was many things – unkind and uncaring toward his children,
violent and abusive of his wives, relentlessly egotistical among
his peers and apprentices, profligate and exploitative – but he was
no stooge.
The teachings of an occultist who happened to be his third wife’s guru
had as little to do with the 20th-century icons he produced as they
had to do with his own, homegrown monomania. Despite page after page of
attempts to link America’s greatest architect to the Montenegro-born,
self-proclaimed healer, it becomes obvious that Wright wasn’t taken
in by the muddle of Buddhism and Sufism that Gurdjieff promoted at
his Institute for the Harmonious Development of Man, in Paris.
Roger Friedland and Harold Zellman, the authors of this long,
ramshackle discourse on the seamy side of Frank Lloyd Wright
and his Taliesin Fellowship, themselves provide sufficient proof
to contradict their own final assertion. In 1950, Wright’s wife,
Olgivanna, and their daughter, Iovanna, urged all the apprentices at
Taliesin to read Gurdjieff’s All and Everything. The architect, ever
imperious, “countered by buying an entire carton of his own American
philosopher-sage Ralph Waldo Emerson’s writings and giving them out to
the apprentices.” He then declared that Emerson would be “obligatory”
reading at the Fellowship. How refreshing, and a fitting anodyne –
except that this recital of Wright’s clearheadedness is colored black
by the authors’ equation of Emerson’s followers to Gurdjieff’s. Which
is a sneaky way of bolstering their point: Frank Lloyd Wright was
under the sway… of someone.
Alas, the authors are stuck in a trap of their own making. The
Fellowship is an intriguing slog because it is about a genuinely
fascinating cult figure: Frank Lloyd Wright. Dozens of his apprentices
traipse through the book, forming lifelong devotions to Wright –
devotions that he almost never reciprocates. Why did they become
and remain his partisans, his boys, as he called them? Why did they
sacrifice their own talent and happiness to slave away in Wright’s
studio, their ambitions stunted, their ideas crushed? Why did they
literally wait on him, hand and foot, as cooks and carpenters,
chauffeurs and secretaries – paying him tuition for the privilege?
His son, Lloyd, a talented architect, wrote to his father, saying
that the fellowship “is in fact and principle a very sorry business
all around. And the sorriest part of it is the feudal business of
your students. That will make them ashamed of themselves and you if
they think and have any perspective and if they don’t they will go
thru life… as cowards and fools. God help your school if this is
what it turns out. You wonder why your pupils are such washouts.”
Every word of this assessment is true, yet Wright carried on
unscathed. “He lived from first to last like a god: one who acts but
is not acted upon,” Lewis Mumford said, and he too was right.
Mumford, who was Wright’s early champion and oftentimes friend (he
persuaded Philip Johnson and Henry-Russell Hitchcock to include Wright
in the Museum of Modern Art’s seminal 1932 exhibit, “The International
Style”), said he possessed “the insolence of his genius.” Like it
or not – and he was more than occasionally unlikable – Frank Lloyd
Wright was one of those protean 19th-century figures able to tower over
the 20th century. Goethe’s model of the self-taught man who remakes
the world reverberated continuously in Wright’s mind. Beethoven’s
symphonies rang in his ears as he drew his buildings. Ruskin’s sense
of beauty limned his own. Wright was also a born huckster, in a line
of great American con artists stretching from Benjamin Franklin to
Mark Twain. He shared their uncanny instinct for deception, for making
up a persona who was strictly for public consumption.
The early tragedy of his life (his second wife and two of her
children were axed to death after a servant set Taliesin aflame),
his philandering, his illicit and bohemian lifestyle, were tabloid
news. But these events were, for the most part, a sideshow.
Architecture was the center of Wright’s life, and little else troubled
or distracted him. Perhaps this is one of the marks of genius. Another
is the ability to see your vision realized. Frank Lloyd Wright never
backed down, never acceded to a client’s wishes. He was an absolutist,
with unshakable faith in his designs. That was, arguably, his greatest
gift, and he made it manifest any number of times in the face of
powerful opposition.
So, at Fallingwater, he was warned against cantilevering the house
over the rocks at Bear Run.
More concrete, more steel, the engineers said. Wright persisted,
persuading his client, Edgar Kaufmann Sr., to build Wright’s house
Wright’s way. Fallingwater, of course, is an acknowledged (if
crumbling) masterpiece; the second half of Wright’s career, which
began after 20 years without a paying client, was launched from that
precarious work out in the woods of southwestern Pennsylvania. At
the Johnson Wax building, Wright was told by Racine officials that
his inverted, cone-shaped columns would collapse, but he got his way
by building a demonstration column and piling it high with sandbags
and rocks far outweighing the proposed load, then, cane in hand,
walking under the perilously overburdened column as if on a Sunday
stroll. At the Guggenheim, he stuck to his unprecedented spiral, which
pushed the limits of both conventional museum walls and concrete work,
waiting nearly 13 years for the museum to begin construction.
For such a man, and such accomplishments, there would always be a
steady supply of aspiring acolytes. Once at Taliesin, apprentices were
subject to Wright’s all-encompassing will. Unflinchingly, he would
tell you how to dress or whom to marry. He would mete out favors;
he would instigate punishments. He was the master. To live in a
world of one great man’s conception, apart from the confusion and
ambiguity of the outside, was like a gift. To some, the confinement
was liberating. Others simply fled.
In such a place, though, there could be no room for a competitor
hawking self-abnegation as a form of personal fulfillment. Frank Lloyd
Wright called Gurdjieff “the Devil and the God,” and he was abundantly
clear when he told his wife, “You’re not going to turn this into a
Gurdjieff Institute. Not while I am alive.” Olgivanna had to wait
until he died, and even then, The Fellowship says, she failed.
Taliesin is forever associated with Wright. Gurdjieff remains on the
margins, where he belongs.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

SO LONG, FAREWELL
By: Barbara & Scott Siegel
TheaterMania
Sep 13, 2006
Charles Aznavour
(© Jean-Baptiste Mondino)
When Charles Aznavour sings “Yesterday When I Was Young” at Radio City
Music Hall on September 18 and 19 in the last two concerts he will ever
give in New York City, the audience will likely be weeping. Aznavour,
who has nurtured a passionate fan base all over the world, is 82 years
old — and though he is ready to say goodbye, those fans don’t want
him to go.
Armenian by birth and French by attitude, this iconoclastic
songwriter/singer never succumbed to the entreaties of American record
executives who urged him to write simpler pop songs. His lyrics are
rich and colorful, and his music is vibrant, no matter if the song in
question is a melancholy ballad or a driving, up-tempo declaration of
life. The composer of nearly 1,000 songs, Aznavour will be hard-pressed
to choose among them for his final New York concerts; the audience
will want to hear so many more than he could possibly perform.
We recently called Aznavour in Paris and spoke with him about his
farewell tour. He was open and candid about what is sure to be a
memorable experience.
THEATERMANIA: How will you design your song list? Will it be different
than other shows because this is your farewell concert?
CHARLES AZNAVOUR: It’s going to be what you call “The Best Of.” I’m
going to sing what the public wants to hear. Why sing new songs? People
sing new songs when they have something to promote. I’m not promoting
anything. I’m just coming to say, “That’s it.”
TM: Are you still writing new songs?
CA: Yes, but I don’t think the public wants to hear something new
when I’m coming for the last time.
TM: Do you realize the impact you’ve had on people’s lives?
CA: It touches me very much. I’m very moved by that.
But the impact comes from the songs. The entertainer in me is less
happy than the writer in me.
TM: When you were last in New York, you spoke on stage about a musical
you were writing. Whatever became of that?
CA: Right now the producer is trying to find the money to present it
in Canada. It played in Germany and in Hungary. It has been translated
into English but it hasn’t been done in France — not yet. Meanwhile,
there’s an American producer working on a show about the songs I’ve
done. The same thing is happening in other countries. I have the
funny feeling that I’m beginning to be “recognized.” “Known” and
“recognized” are two different words. “Known” is people come to see
you as an entertainer; “recognized” comes from what I have written
and what I have done.
TM: Are you retiring because of your health?
CA: I feel well, but I don’t know what condition I will be in in a
few years. I’m 82 and it’s time to retire slowly but surely. What
I prefer to do is to write. I write every day of my life. I will
never be bored. When I end my performing career, I will write plays
and musicals.
TM: What happens after your New York concerts?
CA: I will go to a few more cities in America; then I will start my
farewell tour in Spanish. I will also go to Armenia and Japan. The
last shot will be in French.
A good farewell concert Tour should take four years, at least.
TM: Since the final concerts will be in French, will you come back
to North America to perform in Quebec?
CA: Yes, I will go back to the French part of Canada for the French
part of the tour. But I will not come back in English. English is
not the easiest for me.
TM: Edith Piaf sang “Non, je ne regrette rien.” Do you have any
regrets?
CA: I have no regrets. I did more than what I ever dreamed I would do
in my life. I had a very difficult beginning — very difficult. But
once I got going, I never went down after that. I’ve been blessed.
–Boundary_(ID_rQaRDqNQVAX4Jux8rM0uKw)–
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress