Author: Lara Chatinian

Award-winning Armenian jazz pianist Tigran Hamasyan performed a concert on June 21 in the historic ruins of Ani, the medieval Armenian capital, the Hurriyet Daily News reports.

Within the scope of his project titled “Luys i Luso,” Hamasyan will perform in various Turkish provinces until June 30. He will also give concerts at 100 churches in Armenia, Georgia, Lebanon, France, Belgium, Switzerland,Czech Republic, England, Germany, Luxembourg, Russia and the U.S.

Hamasyan, 27, who started playing piano at the age of three and won the Montreux Jazz Festival in 2003 and the Thelonious Monk Institute piano contest at the age of 18, performs traditional Armenian music in his concerts.

The 90-minute event at the ancient ruins drew great interest from the audience. The master pianist was accompanied by the Yerevan State Chamber Music Choir under the baton of Harutyun Topikyan.

Tamar Nalci, the project coordinator at Anadolu Kültür, which organized Hamasyan’s concerts in Turkey, said the first concert of the program was performed in Ani, and continued:

“Hamasyan is famous Armenian jazz pianist. He gives mini concerts in historic places and churches in many parts of the world, accompanied by the Armenian State Chamber Choir. This is a church music concert. He is taking the stage with a team of 25 persons. At the same time, a documentary film is being made on this process. The documentary team records these concerts. What is happening here is a historic moment because Armenians have an emotional time due to their past in Ani.”

 

A new approach to teaching kids using technology in Armenia has educators from the Middle East, Europe and the US looking to replicate the programme, according to  

The after-school curriculum run by the Tumo Center for Creative Technologies lets students pick areas of interest and acquire skills at their own pace.

“What we’re trying to do is to create an environment where teenagers will be able to reach their full potential,” Marie Lou Papazian, the centre’s director, says.

“We want to give them the opportunity to learn as much as possible, to experiment as much as possible, to be self-confident of what they can do, and never be afraid to jump and take big leaps.”

More than 6,000 students between the ages of 12 and 18 are enrolled free-of-charge at the centre, which was set up with a $20m grant from the US-based Simonian Education Foundation.

Students use a workspace called a Tumo-mobile, which can be moved around for students to work individually or in groups, and they log into a special learning interface called Tumo World.

The proprietary software guides the students through a learning programme in English or Armenian, allowing them to focus on animation, digital media, game design and game development.

“Computer science or programming is a skill that is essential to everyone of the focus areas,” says Papazian.

“You cannot not know or not be familiar with computer programming today. You have to understand how programs work, where you can use them.”

“Even if you’re not a programmer and you’re an artist, you need to know those skills.”

Teachers at the centre include experienced professionals from the world’s leading companies, notably Disney and Pixar; renowned musicians including Serj Tankian, frontman of System of a Down; and film-makers of the calibre of Oscar-nominated Atom Egoyan.

Liz Artinian, a New York animation art director and background designer, volunteers her time to teach at Tumo a few weeks of the year.

“I tell them it’s an arts school, where arts meet technology. It’s a free school for kids to get a good foundation for arts and technology,” says Artinian.

“What I like is that it’s not just old art practices. It’s trying to find the new way and new programmes.”

The centre costs about $1.5m a year to run and its programmes have attracted the attention of educators from around the world, including the US, Russia, Germany, Lebanon, and Egypt.

Nearly a dozen countries are looking to replicate Tumo’s blueprint for learning centres.

“Someone came from MIT Media Lab, and I told them, this is not a school,” says Papazian.

“He said, ‘This is a school and you have to take it very seriously, because this is the future of the school system.’”

Seven people died as a result of a road accident on the 10^th kilometer of the Tashir-Stepanavan highway.

The Volkswagen Tuareg went off the road shortly after midnight, hit a tree and caught on fire.

The victims of the accident were residents of Tashir city and were identified as Vanik Mardoyan, Karen Khachatryan, Gevorg Poghosyan, Arman Tonoyan, Gaspar Ghukeyan, Vahag Albertyan (all from Tashir city) and Arthur Balyan from Yerevan.

A criminal case has been launched at the Lori branch of the Investigative Committee. Probe into the details of the case is under way.

Picasso’s Women of Algiers has become the most expensive painting to sell at auction, going for $179.3m (£115m) at Christie’s in New York, the BBC reports.

Eleven minutes of prolonged bidding from telephone buyers preceded the final sale – for much more than its pre-sale estimate of $140m.

The evening sale also featured Alberto Giacometti’s life-size sculpture Pointing Man, which set a record as the most expensive sculpture, at $141.3m.

The buyers chose to remain anonymous.

The Picasso oil painting is a vibrant, cubist depiction of nude courtesans, and is part of a 15-work series the Spanish artist created in 1954-55 designated with the letters A to O.

The final price of $179,365,000 includes Christie’s commission of just over 12%.

The previous world record for a painting sold at auction was $142.4m, for British painter Francis Bacon’s Three Studies of Lucian Freud.

That sold at Christie’s in 2013.

Experts believe the investment value of art is behind the high prices.

“I don’t really see an end to it, unless interest rates drop sharply, which I don’t see happening in the near future,” said Manhattan dealer Richard Feigen.

Toronto City Council has passed an Armenian Genocide Recognition Motion, Horizon Weekly reports.

Motion MM6.7 reads: “City Council recognizes the 100th Anniversary of the Armenian Genocide to honor the memory of the men, women and children who died.”

The motion was brought forward by Councillor Jim Karygiannis (Ward 39) and, through strong support from longtime friends of the Armenian community, achieved the two-thirds majority required for a procedural motion to avoid being referred to the Executive Committee.

At that point, Councillor Giorgio Mammoliti, who was the recipient of a fundraising campaign during the 2014 municipal election by deniers of the Armenian Genocide, put a hold on the item to prevent it from going straight to a vote.  The item was brought up later in the Council meeting where Councillor John Campbell tried to kibosh the motion by moving “receipt” instead of adopting the recommendation.  The attempt failed and the motion ultimately passed 26-4 with Councillors Campbell, Mammoliti, Berardinetti, and Shiner voting against.

 

 

 

The creation of the radio in 1895 changed a lot in our life. The radio reached Armenia in 1926, and this year the Public Radio of Armenia celebrates the 89^th anniversary.

Speaking on the threshold of the Radio Day (May 7), Armen Amiryan, Executive Director of the Public Radio of Armenia, said “today the Public Radio is both a cultural haven and classic media.

Armen Amiryan does not share the opinion that with the creation of television, radio lost its role and importance. “Technically the Public Radio is more accessible to public,” he told a press conference today.

The Executive Director said “we use all possible modern technologies to make the Public Radio accessible to listeners and readers.” These include the three-language website, social networks, mobile applications, etc.

The Public Radio of Armenia broadcasts in fourteen languages, including Azerbaijani and Turkish. According to Armen Amiryan, this is natural, as “every country in conflict has a message to convey to the neighbors.”

The Executive Director said efforts should be directed at covering the whole FM band in Artsakh to silence the signals of the neighboring countries. The issue was recently discussed with NKR President Bako Sahakyan, he said.

Turkey has returned to the European Parliament an April 15 motion describing the mass killing of Ottoman Armenians during World War I as genocide, as a senior EU official warned Ankara about the consequences of its reaction to statements made by countries and organizations labeling the mass killings genocide, the Hurriyet Daily News reports.
The European Parliament sent its motion to the office of the Permanent Delegation of Turkey to the EU on April 29, Turkey’s state-run Anadolu Agency reported. The office returned the motion on April 30, with a statement by the Permanent Delegation of Turkey attached.

In a swift response, the Turkish Foreign Ministry said “the European Parliament repeated the same exact mistake it made in the past, by being incompatible with international law and exceeding its competence.”

“We return this text, which is an unprecedented example of incoherence in all aspects, verbatim to the abovementioned institution so that the text finds its place among the documents that the European Parliament will shy away from remembering in the future,” the Foreign Ministry said in a written statement released on April 15, only hours after the adoption of the motion in Brussels.

Almost simultaneously with Ankara’s move of returning the motion, that Turkey’s backlash against European countries calling the 1915 killings genocide will complicate Ankara’s ambitions to join the EU.

Commissioner Johannes Hahn told Austrian newspaper Der Standard on April 30 that Ankara’s “very harsh” reaction should be seen in the context of the upcoming June elections.

“This [response] may be quite popular in parts of the country and among certain parts of the population. But what worries me are the long-term consequences,” Hahn said. “The seeds of an anti-European and anti-Western stance are thus sown, which, from today’s perspective, make a future [EU] entry very difficult.”

Turkey has rebuked several EU members including Germany and Austria whose parliaments used the word in resolutions marking the 100th anniversary of the event in April.