Author: Kalantarian Kevo

DAVIT TONOYAN: USING THE PHRASE “FOREIGN COUNTRY” IN RELATION TO RUSSIA SOUNDS STRANGE

ARMENPRESS
SEPTEMBER 22, 2011
YEREVAN

Using the phrase “foreign country” in relation to Russia sounds
strange to all those who are aware of the joint Russian Armenian
military projects, deputy defense minister Davit Tonoyan said,
commenting on the recent public discontent in connection with the
presence of Russian troops at Armenia’s independence parade.

“The servicemen of Russia, Armenia’s strategic ally, marched alongside
Armenian servicemen at the parade dedicated to the 20th anniversary
of independence. They are from a country which provides an invaluable
support to our security,” he said. “For Russia, the phrase ‘foreign
country’ does not coincide with the reality but also sounds strange to
all those who, over the course of years, have witnessed the successful
implementation of Armenian-Russian joint military projects”, the
deputy minister stressed.

Tonoyan said presence of foreign troops in military parades is an
internationally recognized practice. According to him, a battalion
of Armenian honor guards attended a military parade in Italy a few
months ago. Such practice also exists in France.

AZERBAIJANI PARTY DO NOT LEAD THE OSCE MISSION TO ITS FRONT LINES

ARMENPRESS
SEPTEMBER 22, 2011
YEREVAN

On September 22, according to the earlier agreement with the
authorities of the Nagorno Karabakh Republic, the OSCE Mission
held scheduled monitoring of the NKR and Azerbaijani armed forces’
contact-line, in the Hadrut direction.

NKR MFA Press Service reported that from the positions of the NKR
Defense Army, the monitoring was held by Coordinator of the OSCE
Office Imre Palatinus (Hungary) and Field Assistant of the Personal
Representative of the OSCE Chairman-in-Office Antal Herdich (Hungary).

On the opposite side of the contact-line, the monitoring group
comprised, Field Assistants of the Personal Representative of the OSCE
Chairman-in-Office Christo Christov (Bulgaria) and Marius Puodziunas
(Lithuania).

No violation of the cease-fire regime was fixed during the monitoring.

But, the Azerbaijani party didn’t lead the OSCE Mission to its front
lines, to the earlier agreed site, as a result of which the OSCE
monitoring groups had to hold the monitoring from a more distant site.

On the Karabakh side, the monitoring group was accompanied by
representatives of the NKR Ministries of Foreign Affairs and Defense.

ARMENIAN TAVERNA REVIEW
by Jonathan Schofield

Manchester Confidential
Sept 22 2011
UK

I HAD a meal with George Best recently. He was black and white. There
was also John Mundy, one of the Nolan sisters I think, someone
very glamorous called Cassie Baker and Sam Wanamaker, the actor and
filmmaker. All in black and white and all loving the Armenian Taverna.

All in all the re-visit to the Armenian Taverna was great fun. The
prices didn’t break the bank and the antique design of the place
provided a constant conversation point.

After the meal I rang up the National Trust. Apparently they are moving
away from their portfolio of grand stately properties in vast manicured
acres and are looking to acquire more humble premises, that capture
a time, a fashion and a mood: ex-Beatles’ council houses for example.

I suggested they stake an early claim on the Armenian Taverna when
the present goodly owners decide to call it a day.

The menu claims the basement Albert Square restaurant opened in 1968.

The evidence from the decor backs this up. It has all the crazed charm
of a grandparent’s chintzy front room, a mix and unmatch of trinkets,
pots, pictures and wall coverings so old fashioned they’ve gone from
being contemporary and delightful through to being naff and ridiculous
and ended up amusing and appealing.

The two dimensional traditional Armenian dancers’ mural with Mount
Ararat in the distance is so badly drawn but done with such enthusiasm
you can’t help but smile. On our visit we reckoned we found the gay
one. And the boss one.

The black and white pictures of the ‘stars’ – I can barely remember
BBC local newsman John Mundy – complete with endorsements for the
Armenian Taverna are like a echo down the ages of San Carlo’s present
fame galleries. Did Carlo nick the idea from here?

The whole place makes you grin.

The food makes me full.

This is lamb-based fare from the Near East, as it used to be called,
before people got confused and started calling it the Middle East. I’m
not au fait with Armenian food and its traditions strangely enough
but it appears similar to Syrian, Persian and Turkish grub.

The dishes here though don’t carry the subtlety of Persian food.

The Armenian Taverna’s take on goulash (£12) for instance, is massive
and looks like an explosion in a paint factory dominated by brown hues.

The lamb is marinated for two days, apparently, and then slow cooked
for six or seven hours. There’s red wine in there, bay leaves, thyme,
cloves, split peas, barley, the kitchen sink, frogs and snails and
puppy-dogs’ tails. Maybe even sugar and spice and all things nice.

The combination is a great onslaught of flavour and food with a lovely
bubble of rice as well. Winter’s coming folks. If you need bolstering,
this is your boy.

The Madznov kebab (£10.50) was similar in scale. But this time it
came with spiced minted lamb with yoghurt, pitta bread and a fried
egg on top. It also looked a mess, in fact radioactive, and was as
vast and wholesome as the goulash but compromised by an egg that
wasn’t runny enough.

Decent sides such as an oily black olive topped hummous (£4) helped
things along as did a bottle of an aggressive Chateauneuf du Pape
(£26).

The only disappointment was a Kunafeh (£3.50), which should have been
light and rich and sweet with walnuts, syrup, almonds and spices under
a shredded pastry cover. The problem was that the shredded bit was
dryer than Les Dawson’s sense of humour – I think I saw his picture
at the back of the room. The Armenian needs to be more careful with
this dessert, which really was a desert.

Still, all in all the re-visit to the Armenian Taverna was great fun.

The prices didn’t break the bank and the antique design of the place
provided a constant conversation point. There’s a good range of fish
and veggie dishes as well.

If you’ve not been since before the Berlin Wall came down, or before
Manchester made any Olympic bids, then try it again. The aesthetics
of the food won’t appeal but the decor, flavours and scale might.

You can follow Jonathan Schofield on Twitter here @JonathSchofield

ALL SCORED CONFIDENTIAL REVIEWS ARE IMPARTIAL. £1000 to the reader
who can prove otherwise, and dismissal for the staff member who wrote
a review scored out of twenty on a freebie from the restaurant.

The Armenian Taverna Victoria Buildings 1-7 Princess Street, City
0161 834 9025

Rating: 13/20 Food: 6/10 Service: 3/5 Atmosphere: 4/5

ENJOY ARMENIAN CUISINE AT GLENDALE’S ADANA RESTAURANT
By David Latt

Patch.com
Sept 22 2011
CA

If you crave healthy, delicious, affordable food, Adana Restaurant
is worth the trip across town.

Cultural diversity is one of the greatest things about Southern
California. So, if you have a craving for Mexican food, you can
likely satisfy it in no time. The same goes for Japanese, Korean,
Italian, Vietnamese, Iranian, Chinese, Central American, Brazilian,
Argentinean and Armenian dishes.

However, there aren’t many restaurants that offer Armenian fare in the
immediate area, its cuisine may not be at the top of the cravings list
for Palisadians. The greatest concentration of Armenian restaurants,
grocery stores and bakeries is in Glendale.

Adana Restaurant is one of those Glendale eateries that a friend and
I frequent. Even though there are 15 kababs on the menu, I pretty
much stick with the dark meat chicken kabab, priced at $6.50. My
friend likes the lamb chops kabab, priced at $10.95. I should note,
the lamb chops and the baby back ribs ($8.50) are also amazing.

The interior suggests a quiet banquet room in a small, elegant European
hotel. There are white tablecothes and the windows and doors facing
San Fernando Road are framed by delicate wrought iron. The room feels
light and airy.

While waiting for our entrees, we have an Armenian coffee ($1.99),
share a large plate of tabouli ($5.75) and yak about family, work
and movies.

Serge, the waiter, or Edward Khechemyan, the owner and chef, usually
brings a basket of lavash or pita (I prefer lavash) and a dish of
sweet butter.

We eat the tabouli and lavash with relish. The freshly chopped Italian
parsley, tossed with bits of tomato, scallions, olive oil and lemon
juice, has a touch of heat. We happily talk as we eat and sip the
strong coffee.

Armenia is sandwhiched between Turkey and countries previously aligned
with the Soviet Union. So, the country developed dishes adapted from
neighboring countries, with the strongest influence coming from Turkey
and the Middle East.

Once our entrees arrive, I notice the pieces of dark meat chicken
on my plate are lined up like pillows, resting on a bed of rice. My
buddy’s lamb chops come with that same generous helping of rice. We
had both selected the same two side dishes: homemade hummus and a
brightly colored Persian salad of roughly chopped ripe tomatoes,
red onions, Italian parsley and unpeeled Iranian cucumbers.

Needless to say, our conversation comes to an abrupt halt when our
entrees arrive. My friend attacks the lamb chops with his hands,
then scoops up fork fulls of the rice, with the flavor addition of
the sides.

I eat with more deliberation, spreading butter and hummus on a piece
of lavash, adding a spoonfull of rice, Persian salad and slices of the
juicy dark chicken meat, almost like a complete packet of flavor. I
construct the next packet-and then next-until l I have eaten every
last grain of rice and piece of chicken.

Chef Khechemyan could cut corners in his closet-sized kitchen, but
he won’t. Even though the prices are little more than you would pay
at a fast food restaurant, the food is prepared-to-order using the
freshest ingredients. He insists on working with quality food and the
proof is in each bite. Khechemyan and his fellow chef, Sonik Nazaryan,
are masters of layering flavors.

For a small restaurant, the menu has a good variety of dishes,
including familiar American classics, including Philly cheese steak
sandwiches, hamburgers and chicken breast sandwiches to name a few.

Adana also offers many salads, thick, spicy lentil and barley soups
and traditional Armenian stews. Finally, there are many popular Middle
Eastern appetizers such as domeh, hummus, yogurt and cucumber dip.

The combination of textues and flavors is such a pleasure. Any foodie
in search of umami has to make the trek to Adana. That’s what’s at
work here. All your taste buds are in play-salty, sour, sweet and
bitter. I go back as often as I can.

ARMEN DONELIAN PERFORMS SEPT. 23 IN NEW HAVEN
By Owen Mcnally, Special To The Courant

Hartford Courant
Sept 22 2011
CT

Although he has a blue-chip resume, a distinctive personal sound as a
pianist and composer and has just released his ninth envelope-pushing
album on Sunnyside Records, Armen Donelian is hardly a household
name, except perhaps in the hippest of homes where adventurous,
often lyrical cutting-edge music is revered.

Donelian, leads his bold, cohesive quintet Friday, Sept. 23 at 8:30
and 10 p.m. at New Haven’s Firehouse 12.

Celebrating the release of his CD, “Leapfrog,” the bandleader is
joined at Firehouse 12 by his four colleagues on his new disc: Dutch
saxophonist Marc Mommaas, guitarist Mike Moreno, bassist Dean Johnson
and drummer Tyshawn Sorey, an inventive percussionist who combines
muscularity with musicianly smarts.

Look for a repertoire rooted in the material on “Leapfrog,” which
features eight Donelian compositions. Released this month, the album
was recorded, mixed and mastered last year at Firehouse 12 by the
cutting-edge music center’s owner and chief engineer Nick Lloyd.

Donelian, who studied with the harmonically advanced, probing pianist
Richie Beirach, is an expressionist composer who ranges easily in
mood from the dark and forebodingly tumultuous to the mysterious
and dreamy. “Rage,” the CD opener, is drenched in brooding, almost
obsessively compulsive thematic repetition, generating a dizzying
mood accentuated by the empathetic unison guitar/piano passages
spun by Moreno and Donelian. But the very next track, “The Poet,” in
dramatic contrast, glides mysteriously above it all, a reassuringly
serene sotto voce response to the tempestuous atmospherics of “Rage.”

“The inspiration for this music came from my reflections on where the
world is going these days,” Donelian explains of the CD’s shifting
moods, including the joyful, leapfrogging, energy of the CD’s grand
finale, “Inner Sanctum.”

Even before he stepped out into the jazz world, Donelian, as a
musically gifted child of Armenian parents, was immersed in his home
in Armonk, NY, with the sounds of Armenian, Turkish, Greek and Middle
Eastern music both at festive, music-filled family gatherings and
through his father’s record collection. His father, who was born in
the old Ottoman Empire and had lost dozens of family members during
the Armenian genocide, was a physicist who worked on the Manhattan
Project, the massive research and development program that created
the first atomic bomb duringWorld War II.

Quite serious about his ethnic heritage, he has traveled to Armenia
numerous times to perform. As a Fulbright Senior Scholar in 2002,
he taught at Yerevan State Conservatory, located in downtown Yerevan,
the capital of Armenia. In addition, he has had Fulbright residencies
in Finland, Sweden, Switzerland and Greece, taught extensively at
the college level and written authoritative instructional texts.

Since breaking into the jazz world’s major leagues in 1975 with Mongo
Santamaria’s Afro-Cuban Jazz Octet, the versatile pianist has served
significant stints with such jazz greats as Sonny Rollins, Chet Baker,
Billy Harper and Paquito D’Rivera. His collaborations with other
luminaries over the years have included the late Thomas Chapin, the
noted creative music saxophonist/composer who grew up in Manchester.

At age 12 in his first step into jazz, Donelian played in a Dixieland
band directed by the well-known guitarist Arthur Ryerson, Sr. A big
band veteran and a consummate studio musician, Ryerson recorded with
Frank Sinatra and Charlie Parker. Ryerson’s daughter, Ali, who is
today a prominent flutist and recording artist from Connecticut,
played in the band along with her brothers.

For all his academic training, extensive experience as an educator
with four decades in the business as a globe-trotting performer,
the 60-year-old still stresses the basics, including the wise use
of space, the primacy of melody and the abhorrence of clutter purely
for clutter’s sake ~W “telling a story” is what it’s really all about.

“I like stating an idea and leaving space for listeners to absorb it.

When there’s too much happening, there’s not much listening going on.

I’m after a deep melodicism,” he says of his approach to whatever
he plays or writes. Old verities, like closely listening to your
bandmates and interacting to what they say, are also prime tenets of
his working philosophy.

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VIC DARCHINYAN TO FACE ANSELMO MORENO THIS DECEMBER

news.am
Sept 22 2011
Armenia

Armenian boxer, IBO belt-holder Vakhtang Darchinyan will face on
December 3 WBA bantamweight super champion Anselmo Moreno in Honda
Center of US Anaheim city, reports Showtime.

The second major event of the evening will be the rematch for IBF
title in the same weight category between its current owner Abner
Mares from Mexico and Joseph Agbeko from Ghana.

ASYMMETRIC RELATIONS BETWEEN RUSSIA AND ARMENIA

The Messenger
Sept 22 2011
Georgia

The head of the regional research centre in Yerevan, Richard
Kirakosian, stated on September 19 that Russia and Armenia have
asymmetric relations. According to him, Russia is paying millions of
dollars to Kyrgyzstan to maintain a Russian military base there and
to Azerbaijan to maintain the Gabal radio location system there,
whereas Armenia pays itself for the maintenance for the Russian
military base in Gyumri in Armenia. According to Kirakosian, Armenia
is the only reliable partner for Russia in the region, but does not
get adequate benefits in return. According to Kirakosian, the fact
that Armenia’s borders are controlled by another country proves that
its independence is not on an appropriate level. In should be mentioned
here that official Yerevan politicians, militaries and ordinary people,
consider the Russian military base to be one of the major guarantees
of the safety of the country.Just some years ago the terms of the
presence of the Russian military base in Armenia were prolonged for
up to forty nine years.

AZERBAIJAN EMBASSY STUDYING REPORTS ON ‘NKR’-RELATED EVENTS IN MARSEILLES

news.az
Sept 22 2011
Azerbaijan

Azerbaijani FM issued relevant instructions to the Embassy in France
on conduction of an event on separatist regime in Nagorno-Karabakh
in Marseilles.

This was announced by spokesman for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs
of Azerbaijan Elman Abdullayev.

According to reports in Armenian media, the National Library of the
French city of Marseille held an event devoted to the separatist
regime in Nagorno-Karabakh, which was organized by the City Hall and
Coordinating Council of Armenian Organizations of France.

The event was attended by members of the French National Assembly:
Deputy Head of the French delegation to the OSCE Parliamentary
Assembly, First Deputy Mayor of Marseilles Roland Blum, vice-mayor
of Marseille, Valerie Buae, Richard Malia, Guy Teissier, Francois
Rochebloine, as well as representatives of regional and municipal
authorities, community, the Armenian community and journalists.

French Embassy in Azerbaijan has refused to comment on this information
spread by Armenian media.

ARMENIA’S NATIONAL ARCHIVE CONTAINS 350 MILLION DOCUMENTS

news.am
Sept 22 2011

YEREVAN. – Armenia’s National Archive contains 95% of the most
important research and historical documents preserved from the Soviet
times, said head of archive Amatuni Virabyan.

However, only 75% of documents referring to common citizens have
been preserved.

The documents of independent Armenia starting from those related to the
1991 referendum and government decisions are also kept in the archive.

The total number of archived documents makes 350 million, while 300,
000 out of them (30 million pages) are dossiers of independent Armenia,
he added.

Virabyan also noted that necessary measures are taken to preserve the
documents. The archive is equipped with modern devices which preserve
the required temperature. In May the archive purchased two new devices
to digitize the materials.

At the same time, Virabyan informed that the archive does not possess
any original copy of Armenia’s declaration of independence, signed
by Armenian First President Levon Ter-Petrosyan.

DOES ARMENIAN GOVERNMENT TAKE BACK SAVED OR EMBEZZLED MONEY FROM COMPANY?

news.am
Sept 22 2011
Armenia

With the Armenian government’s decision on Thursday, the Tamara
Fruit company will have to return 56 million drams ($148,466 US) to
state budget. By way of Russian credits, the Armenian government had
provided a 300-million-dram ($795,355) grant to this company in 2009,
to create organic gardens. And according to the government’s decision
on Thursday, Tamara Fruit had acquired more seed material than planned,
and, as a result, 56 million drams were saved.

The government, therefore, had decided that the aid money should
comprise 244 million drams ($646,889), instead of 300 million. In
addition, Armenia’s Control Chamber had recorded several violations by
Tamara Fruit in using state funds. That is, by indicating seedling and
other material prices higher than the actual market price, Tamara Fruit
had received an extra 77.5 million drams ($205,466) from state budget.

In addition, the Ministry of Agriculture had immediately transferred
the 300 million drams to Tamara Fruit. Thus, the Government of Armenia
took back, in part, its generous “gift” to the company, but presented
it as “return of saved funds,” in the case when the Control Chamber
indicates incorrect calculations.