Category: 2017

Music: Armenian composer’s "lost" concerto to gain momentum in Charlottesville

Ani Kharatian
PanArmenian, Armenia
Oct 25 2017
Armenian composer’s “lost” concerto to gain momentum in Charlottesville

The Crozet Community Orchestra will perform the “lost” concerto of Arno Babajanian November 11 in Charlottesville, Virginia, wvtf reports.

Babajanian is a brilliant composer from Armenia who, aside from classical pieces,wrote film scores and popular songs for Russian crooners during the Soviet era.

“Many composers, during the Soviet times, were hired to write music for movies and cartoons,” says Monika Chamasyan — a concert violinist from Virginia who made her debut at Carnegie Hall in 2009. ” Even composers like Shostakovich and Prokofiev were doing that.”

Chamasyan first heard this concerto in Armenia at a memorial service for Babajanian in 1983.

“During the 60’s and 70’s my teacher, Willi Mokatzian, was a respected soloist and a close friend to Babajanian,” she recalls. “This concerto was dedicated to him.”

Years later, after she had moved to America, Chamasyan met Phillip Clark – conductor of the Crozet Community Orchestra, .and told him about the concerto.

“He said, ‘Let’s do it!”

But doing it proved more complicated than either one expected. It took months to find the score – a guide to what every member of the orchestra would play at once. That was of no use to the individual players.

“So you have to present a part specifically for a first violin that they can put on the stand,” Clark explains. “They don’t see any of the other music. They just hear it.”

And Chamasyan couldn’t find those individual scores.

“She said they’d got lost in the Soviet breakup,” he says. “Apparently lots of people went into the music library and just took what they wanted. There’s was no structure — no policing.”

Clark decided to re-create those parts one by one.

“From a 230-240 page score, that’s a lot of copying, and it did take me three years to do it,” he says.

And that was with help from a computer program called Finale.

“Which is good, because I can’t read my own writing anyway,” Clark jokes. “I think about Mozart and Beethoven. They must have spent half their lives correcting proofs and stuff like that.”

And Monika Chamasyan is equally excited – preparing to solo with the orchestra on what is likely the North American debut of Babajanian’s concerto.

“I feel blessed that I’m going to be playing this long lost concerto that was dedicated to my teacher, and I hope that I can give Babajanian some of the recognition that he deserves.”

The orchestra will perform November 11 at Aldersgate Church in Charlottesville – a day chosen pretty much at random. It turned out to be the day the composer died. The following day, November 12th, the Community Orchestra will play at the Baptist Church in Crozet. Admission is free. In Charlottesville, I’m Sandy Hausman.

Music/Film: Armenia’s Naregatsi Art Institute to host film screening about Komitas

Talar Tumanian
Panorama, Armenia
Oct 25 2017
Culture 18:22 25/10/2017Armenia

Armenia’s Naregatsi Art Institute will host the screening of a new film about Armenian monk and genius composer Komitas on 26 October. 

The film titled “Post Factum… The past defines the future” tells about the musicological activities of Komitas and about how he became a victim of political and social controversies.

The event will be attended by the film director Movses Gasparyan, producer and cameraman Gagik Harutyunyan and senior researcher of the musical fund at the Charents Museum of Literature and Arts, musicologist Marine Musheghyan, who will talk about the film, presenting interesting facts about Komitas’s life and creative activity.

The entrance is free.

The film screening will be proceeded by the screening of “Plough Song” (Goutanerg) – a documentary presenting Komitas’s most important work which the entire film is based on, Gagik Harutyunyan told Panorama.am.

“The second film is about uncovering a fraud, based on clear facts. The discovery has made us review some matters regarding Komitas Vardapet: how much we know him and how much we develop his art line,” he said.

Gagik Harutyunyan spoke about the false information about the renowned musician, noting there went talks that he allegedly defended his diploma work in Germany on the topic of Kurdish folk songs. “He did not defend any diploma work there, that system was not even applied. It was used as a measure of defense, since Komitas was accused of nationalism until 1915. The false news was disseminated by Armenians to protect Komitas. The film proves it through documents, which we have discovered in our archives, rather than in Germany or Jerusalem,” he detailed.

Gagik Harutyunyan also added musicologist Marine Musheghyan will present an unpublished document following the film screening.

Film: Joe Berlinger’s Armenian Genocide Film ‘Intent To Destroy’ Wins Best Doc at Doc LA

Nahapetian Samvel
Deadline
Oct 25 2017
by Anita Busch

2:00pm

Joe Berlinger’s documentary about the Armenian genocide Intent to Destroy won the top Best Documentary Film Award at 2017 DOC LA. The film-in-film produced by Berlinger, Chip Rosenbloom and Eric Esrailian depicts the century of sophisticated denial campaigns by the Turkish government that perpetrated the Armenian Genocide in Ottoman Turkey, and features Atom Egoyan, Christian Bale, Mike Medavoy, Eric Bogosian, Serj Tankian, Angela Sarafian, Shohreh Aghdashloo, and the US ambassador John Marshall Evans.

DOC LA also gave out a number of other awards as well. Another standout film was Sebastien Paquet’s Mind Over Matter whicc won Best Screenwriting, Best Cinematography and took home the Audience Award. The documentary is about a man born with Cerebral Palsy who overcame his disability through sheer will to form a successful rock band. The film produced by Nate Adams was received with standing ovations.

The documentary VIF about Christian Audigier (whom Michael Jackson called “the King of Fashion”) won Best Director and Best Producer Awards for Didier Beringuer and Fabrice Sopoglian, respectively. It tells of Audigier’s phenomenal rise to fame and his tragic death from rare form of cancer, and includes intimate recollections from his friends including Snoop Dogg, Michael Madsen, Stephen Dorff, as well as features Sylvester Stallone, Kim Kardashian, Damond John, Don Cheadle and Ed Hardy.

Marion Cotillard’s environmental documentary The Girl and the Typhoons received the Best Environmental Film Award and the Parajanov-Vartanov Institute Award (whose past recipients include Martin Scorsese and Emma Thompson). The film documents the attempts of a young survivor to raise awareness about the aftermath of the typhoon disasters in her native Philippines.

Narrated by Cotillard and directed by Christoph Schwaiger, the documentary had it’s Los Angeles premiere at DOC LA.

Thee Alfred Molina-narrated Erdogan: The Dictator’s Republic by Ryan & Joe Heilman had its world premiere at the festival, and received DOC LA Freedom Award and DOC LA Storyteller Award.  The documentary by Inga Bremer was recognized with DOC LA Founder’s Award. Virginie Ledoyen was recognized for her role in David Koch’s “Witnesses” which is about the current conflict in dictator Bashar al-Assad’s Syria.

Michael Weatherly’s Telluride doc Jamaica Man about Nigel Pemberton won for Best Documentary Portrait, and Craig Detweiler’s Remand narrated by Angela Bassett, about LA lawyer Jim Gash and Tumusiime Henry, who inspired justice reform in Uganda, received DOC LA Justice Award and DOC LA Icon Award.

Ladies First by Uraaz Bahl, an inspirational survival story of Deepika Kumari, who was born on the roadside to abject poverty and at 16 become the number one archer in the world, won Best Short Documentary Award.

Grab and Run by Roser Corella about bride abduction epidemic in Kazakhstan received the Best International Documentary Award. He She I by Carlotta Kittel, the first feature length student film ever at DOC LA won the Best Student Film – Gold, while Sisterly by Nina Vallado, about finding deeper connection and friendship with her autistic sister, and Melissa Ferrari’s experimental animation Phototaxis, won Silver and Bronze, respectively.

Tourism: Top Armenian tourist sites in focus of digital preservation project

Baghdasarian Karlen
PanArmenian, Armenia
Oct 25 2017
– 13:20 AMT
Top Armenian tourist sites in focus of digital preservation project

A new project of digital preservation has launched in Tumo aimed at scanning and processing Armenia’s Noravank monastery and Areni-1 cave.

A 13th-century Armenian monastery, Noravank is on the tentative list of UNESCO World Heritage Sites, whereas the Areni-1 cave complex is a multicomponent site where the earliest known shoe and the earliest known winery in the world were announced to have been found in 2010 and 2011, respectively.

Experts from CyArk, a nonprofit organization in California, have already arrived in the country and started the 3D scanning process.

CyArk’s official mission statement is “digitally preserving cultural heritage sites through collecting, archiving and providing open access to data created by laser scanning, digital modeling, and other state-of-the-art technologies.”

The initiative started on October 23 in cooperation with Tumo and The My Armenia Program funded by USAID and implemented by the Smithsonian Institution.

The group will visit Noravank and the cave nearby on October 25 to carry out three-dimensional filming and process the collected materials later on.

3D scanning is a popular technique for analyzing a real-world object or environment to collect data on its shape and possibly its appearance.

Azerbaijani press: Novruz Mammadov: Azerbaijan itself can decide whether to leave Council of Europe or not

Emil Lazarian

By  Trend


It is up to Azerbaijan to decide whether to leave the Council of Europe or not, Novruz Mammadov, assistant to the president for foreign policy issues, head of department, told reporters in Baku on October 23.

“Azerbaijan can take every step within its own interests whenever it needs that. No one in the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe or in Europe wants Azerbaijan to leave the Council of Europe. The issue cannot be put in the form of Azerbaijan’s removal from the organization,” said Mammadov.

“Today, the world community needs justice, but, unfortunately, PACE and other such organizations sacrifice justice for smaller geopolitical interests,” noted the presidential assistant.

He said there cannot be universal values, commonly referred to by the West, if there is no justice.

“If there is no justice, human rights and freedoms will be exploited and put forward as a political factor,” added Mammadov.

Azerbaijan wants the international organizations, where it is a member, to be fair, said the top official.

“A state, which occupies a part of the territory of a member of the Council of Europe, is also a member of that same organization. However, nobody says anything to the invader – Armenia,” he noted.

Mammadov went on to say that in the 21st century, at a time when human intelligence is the most developed, the processes taking place in the world, between countries, and in countries are evident.

“Thousands of people die in Iraq, Syria, Libya and dozens of African states every day. Nobody speaks about it, but these processes do not happen by themselves,” he said, adding that in this case suffering aren’t only those states where these processes happen.

“The threat is growing and those big states ultimately suffer from it,” added the Azerbaijani official.

Two world wars happened in the 20th century and none of them was initiated by small states, said Mammadov.

“In such situations, serious threats emerge for big states too. That is the main issue,” he added.

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Azerbaijani press: Amanda Paul: South Caucasus is one of most highly militarized regions in the world

Baghdasarian Karlen
21:54 (UTC+04:00)

Baku, Azerbaijan, Oct. 23

By Gulgiz Muradova – Trend:

The South Caucasus is one of the most highly militarized regions in the world, which is extremely dangerous, said Amanda Paul, Senior Policy Analyst at European Policy Centre (EPC).

Paul made the remark while talking to Trend over news that the Armenian side has approved the deal with Russia on weapons supply to Armenia through a $200 million deal. The Armenian government approved the first $ 100 million loan package, which will be extended to Armenia for 20 years.

Paul stressed that the militarization of Armenia and more broadly the region is not positive, but, Yerevan obviously feels the need to match and outdo Azerbaijani military capabilities.

“The biggest benefactor is Russia because it is Moscow that not only has a military base in Armenia, which allows Russia to project power, it also sells vast amounts of arms to both Armenia and Azerbaijan, declaring that this is part of Moscow’s balanced policy,” she wrote in an email to Trend.

Emphasizing that in this respect Russia is contributing negatively to the conflict, Paul noted that more than anything it allows Russian to have a large regional influence.

Armenia, probably best known for occupation of Azerbaijan’s internationally recognized territories and attacks to the neighboring countries, is the aggressor side, while Azerbaijan is the country suffering from Armenia’s aggression for over two decades. Therefore, supplying Armenia with weapons can be regarded as the support to aggression rather than balanced policy between the parties to the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.

Although, Baku is loyal to the Karabakh peace process, Yerevan refuses to fulfill the UN four resolutions on immediate withdrawal from the internationally recognized territory of Azerbaijan and continuously resorts to provocations.

Azerbaijan is currently ranked 58th among 133 countries considered for the annual GFP reviews, with power index rating of 0.8875 (0.0000 being perfect). The Armenian Army took the 93rd place.

Azerbaijani press: Top Azerbaijani official slams Sargsyan’s approach to Karabakh talks

Maghakian Mike

By  Trend


Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan agreed with the statement that was meant to be declared after his recent meeting with Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev, but right after the meeting he uttered the very first thing that came to his mind, Novruz Mammadov, assistant to the president for foreign policy issues, head of department, told reporters in Baku on October 23.

Mammadov said that Sargsyan voiced ideas that were incompatible with the spirit of the meeting.

Azerbaijani president, other officials responded to the Armenian president, noted the official.

“Sargsyan promised in front of the co-chairs that he agrees to bring the concrete ideas to the world community after the meeting, but after the meeting, he acts hypocritically and speaks otherwise,” said the top official.

“If the Armenian president did not agree with the statement, he could have said so during the meeting. He should’ve said that following the meeting, he would be speaking anything that comes to his mind,” Mammadov said.

“In this case, how will the Armenian people trust him? How will he ensure the development and welfare of his people? What do the co-chairs think about the president who promises and then takes a different step?! If you have a status as head of state, you can’t be hypocritical and lie.”

The Armenian people are in a a tough situation due to such leaders, said Mammadov.

“Armenians are leaving their country. Only 2.5 million people live in Armenia today. According to forecasts, if this situation continues, the population will not exceed 2.5 million people in 20 years,” he noted adding that meanwhile, Azerbaijan’s population has increased by three million people since the country gained its independence.

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Azerbaijani press: Novruz Mammadov: What do co-chairs think about Armenian president who promised and then took different step?!

Karapet Navasardian
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After the last meeting with Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev, Armenian President Serzh Sargsyanvoiced ideas that were incompatible with the spirit of the meeting, Novruz Mammadov, assistant to Azerbaijan’s president for foreign policy issues, head of department, said on Monday, APAreported. 

 

According to Mammadov, the head of state is a representative of a nation.

 

“That people somehow chose this person, believing that he is the most dignified person who would live up to his promise and carry the country forward,” he said.

 

The presidential assistant noted that the last meeting of the Azerbaijani and Armenian presidents was also joined by the foreign ministers of the two countries, as well as the tree OSCE Minsk Group co-chairs, and the representatives of the OSCE Chairperson-in-Office.

 

“But what happened in the last meeting of the presidents of Azerbaijan and Armenia? For a long time, negotiations between the Azerbaijani and Armenian presidents on the settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict were not conducted, the Armenian side always hindered it,” he said. 

 

“It was stated at the last meeting that a statement consisting of 3 or 4 items of this long-delayed meeting be brought to the attention of the international community. All agreed,” Mamamdov said. “If the Armenian president did not agree with the statement, he could have said so during the meeting. He should’ve said that following the meeting, he would be speaking anything that comes to his mind.”

 

“Sargsyan promised in front of the co-chairs that he agrees to bring the concrete ideas to the world community after the meeting, but after the meeting, he acts hypocritically and speaks otherwise,” added the top official.

 

The Azerbaijani president, other officials responded to the Armenian president, noted Mammadov.

 

“In this case, how will the Armenian people trust him? How will he ensure the development and welfare of his people? What do the co-chairs think about the president who promises and then takes a different step?! If you have a status as head of state, you can’t be hypocritical and lie,” he added.

 

The Armenian people are in a tough situation due to such leaders, said Mammadov.

 

“Armenians are leaving their country. Only 2.5 million people live in Armenia today. According to forecasts, if this situation continues, the population will not exceed 2.5 million people in 20 years,” he said.

 

Mammadov noted that Azerbaijan’s population has increased by three million people since the country gained its independence.

“This shows the difference between the two countries and is an indicator of the development of Azerbaijan. Azerbaijan and its capital are one of the most beautiful countries and capitals of the world,” he added. 

Azerbaijani press: Defense ministry: Azerbaijani army ready to once again prove its strength

Emil Karabekian

By  Trend


Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev’s speech at the 72nd session of the UN General Assembly was a speech necessary not only for Azerbaijan, Novruz Mammadov, assistant to the president for foreign policy issues, head of department, told reporters in Baku on October 23.

The president’s speech was a message to the international community, according to him.

Mammadov noted that over the past few decades, the situation on the international arena has dramatically changed and worsened, stability and security have been impaired in certain regions, and today ensuring a world order that secures stability and sustainable development has become a problem.

“From this point of view, the speech of Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev at the 72nd session of the UN General Assembly means that it is not correct to follow this path, as it contributes neither to the resolution of conflicts nor to ensuring stability, security and sustainable development. Therefore, it is necessary to abandon double standards, lies and biased positions. From this point of view, the speech of Azerbaijani president was a message to the world community. Today there is a lot of tension between large countries. And it is very difficult to predict what the end will be,” he said.

He noted that Azerbaijan played a big role in returning Russia-Turkey relations to normal.

“There are many such examples, and in this regard, Azerbaijan plays a very important role on the international arena,” Mammadov added.

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Azerbaijani press: Armenian Parliament acknowledges country’s desperate situation

Hovik Karapetian

By Azernews


By Rashid Shirinov

The deplorable situation in the Armenian economy and society continues for many years, but the country’s government still is not capable to fix it. The situation has got to the point that the Armenian government now openly acknowledges its failures.

“The wages are not growing, at the same time there is inflation, and the situation is deteriorating,” said Mikael Melkumyan, Vice-speaker of Armenia’s National Assembly, at the meeting of the Committee on Health and Social Issues on October 20.

Indeed, the wages in the country are not growing, but rather falling down. Significant decrease in salaries is being observed throughout Armenia, in both public and private sectors of employment. Meanwhile, the prices for goods and services in the country continue to go up, and this hits ordinary Armenians.

Melkumyan further added that the political assessment of the state budget is negative.

“If there is no growth of salaries and pensions since 2015 in this country, it is natural that the political rating should be negative. People want progress and their income to grow,” he noted. “If we add the existing inflation to this, it is natural that the situation is getting worse.”

The Vice-speaker further spoke about the youth unemployment in Armenia and noted that it exists in Europe too, but there are jobs in Europe and no applicants. “But we have no jobs,” he acknowledged.

Unemployment remains one of the main problems of the Armenian society for many years. Although the trend keeps growing, the Armenian government still fails to fight the problem. This year, the unemployment rate in the country already hit 19 percent of the economically active population.

With every hundred new workplaces, several hundred of them get closed, and as a result, more than 200,000 of economically active people in Armenia are now unemployed, and this is just the official data, which can be forged.

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