RUSSIA WILL NOT SELL WEAPONS TO ARMENIA AT DISCOUNTED PRICE
Azeri Press Agency, Azerbaijan
March 26 2006
In return of increase in the price of gas delivered to Armenia, Russia
will not sell weapons to this country at a discounted price (APA).
The head of the press-service of the Armenian president Viktor
Sogomonyan refuted news as if Russia will discount prices of military
equipment sold to Armenia. According to him, though Russia raised the
price of gas delivered to Armenia, no compensation will be applied
for Armenia.

SAVARSH KOCHARYAN: “RUSSIA MADE ARMENIA A POLYGON OF POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC PRESSURE”
Azeri Press Agency, Azerbaijan
March 26 2006
“Because of a policy of obedience pursued by official Yerevan, Armenia
has already turned from a fortpost of Russia into its addition”.
This statement was made by the chair of the National Democratic
Party of Armenia Savarsh Kocharyan (APA). He stressed that Armenia
has become a polygon of political and economic pressure of Russia.
“Russia continues supporting authoritarian regimes in the territory
of the former USSR. Moscow is concerned about Armenia’s inclination to
integrate into Europe and wants authoritarian regime to be established
in our country as it exists in Belarus”.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

CHILDREN’S FILM FEST BEGINS THIS WEEKEND
Oregon Coast Beach Connection, Oregon
March 26 2006
(Portland, Oregon) – The Lil’ Longbaugh International Film Festival for
KIDS begins this weekend, celebrating the spirit, wit, and intrinsic
goodness of children. The 2006 Lil’ Longbaugh International Film
Festival features global cinema created for and by children from
Japan, Norway, Mexico, Argentina, England, Serbia-Montenegro, Armenia,
Belgium, Australia and homegrown masterpieces from Oregon.
Lil’ Longbaugh is the little brother of Willamette Week’s Longbaugh
Film Festival.
The festival began today at the Portland Children’s Museum, with a
screening of the best of the 2005 festival.
The rest of the schedule:
Monday March 27th Portland Children’s Museum 1 p.m. Editing Workshop A
part of the “These Are the People in Your Neighborhood” spring break
program, the young Hitchcocks in your household cut, draw and edit
footage. Registration is limited and free with museum admission.
Friday April 7th Kennedy School 3:30 p.m. Screening: Muslim Boarders,
The Children’s March – Documentaries of empowered young people
educating an often misguided world. Inspiring cinema for middle and
high school students.
Saturday April 8th Kennedy School 10 a.m. Screening: A Tribute to
Sisbro Edventures – Wildlife filmmakers Laura and Rob Sams present
animal films of grizzly bears, and the crazy raccoon Fernando
Hernandafandavez.
Noon Screening: Shorts for Youngsters – International shorts for
preschoolers!
1:30 p.m. Screening: Family Screening – A collection of shorts for
everyone and special showing of Laika Entertainment’s Moongirl,
with guest animator.
3 p.m. Screening: Legacy of Rosa Parks – Community leaders join in
this poignant screening followed by a discussion.
Sunday, April 9th Portland Art Museum’s Whitsell Auditorium Noon
Screening: KID films from Estonia! Obscure? Yes. Funny? You bet!
Animated shorts spanning pre and post-communist control in a little
county big in animated talent. It wouldn’t really be a festival
without great music. Captain Bogg and Salty rock out with shanties
of pirate adventures. Proceeds from both programs go to support the
NW Film Center’s Young Filmmaker Program.
Mission Theater 3 p.m. Screening: Young Adult Showcase – Independent
films for like-minded minors.
Lil’ Longbaugh is hosted by Indiekid Films, folks who believe that
everyone around the world, regardless of age, should see and create
great movies. Take it to the street little people!
A full roster Lil’ Longbaugh films is on their website,

MERCENARIES THRIVE WHERE LAW AND ORDER HAVE DEGENERATED
By Gordon Opiyo
The Standard, Kenya
March 26 2006
With the shocking allegations of Government protection of suspected
mercenaries, the big question is: What dealings does the State have
with such characters?
The Armenian Government has denied any link with either Artur Sargsyan
or Artur Margaryan. The two had earlier claimed that they are related
to the Armenian leader.
But the biggest worry is that the region the two come from is known
in international circles for producing specialised private military
consultants, better known as mercenaries.
During the Eritrea-Ethiopia war in the late 1990s there were
allegations that a former Russian Army colonel, who had been hired as
a mercenary, was ejected from an Ethiopian SU-27 fighter jet. Russia
disputed the claim.
During the Balkan war, Slobodan Milosevic is alleged to have used
mercenaries from former Soviet Union republics kontraktniki (contract
soldiers) to perform several atrocities. The kontraktniki issue came
up during the hearing at the International War Crimes Tribunal in
The Hague before the sudden death of Milosevic, two week ago.
The tribunal heard that in May 1995, a group of kontraktniki arrived in
the Gacko-Avtovac region in Serbia, at the invitation of the command
of the Herzegovina Corps, which intended to organise an international
brigade. The members of this ‘brigade’ (which actually numbered around
150 troops) wore one-piece, overall type black Russian uniforms with
black berets or flight caps. Most of their members were officers above
the rank of captain from the special units of the Russian Ministry
of Defence, who had deserted the Russian military.
The kontraktniki also featured during the war in Afghanistan, and a
number of them were involved in the transportation of cocaine.
In Africa, the use of specialised mercenaries is common in areas that
have a breakdown in law and order, yet has massive resources.
It is of great interest that the Artur brothers claimed to have great
interest in diamond business in the Congo – a rich country alien to
law and order.
Jeremy Harding, an editor with the London Review of Books, investigated
the role of mercenaries in the diamond and gold business in Africa
over a decade ago and came up with shocking revelations.
He discovered that many multinational corporations in gold and diamond
producing areas invested in private armies. The biggest private army
defending corporations in Africa was called Executive Outcomes. Many
of their recruits were former members of the 32nd Battalion of the
South African Army, the so-called Buffalo Battalion.
Executive Outcomes transformed itself into a big corporation doing
business with many African countries. They had a CEO Nick van der Burgh
who always defended their actions. Burgh always insisted that EO, as
they are known, only worked with legitimate governments to provide
specialised security and intelligence services. EO was involved in
protecting a number of diamond mines in Sierra Leone and Congo.
In August 1998 EO’s intelligence officer Rico Visser told South
African journalists that the Congolese President Laurent Kabila had
hired them to defend the strategic Inga Dam, south west of Kinshasa,
the capital city of Congo. Electricity from the dam not only powers
Kinshasa but is also key to the mining region of Shaba (Katanga)
in the south of the country.
Mercenaries have been doing booming business in war-torn
southern Sudan. There were claims three years ago that hundreds of
professional soldiers for hire were working for Arakis, a Canadian
oil company. Arakis had signed a billion dollar agreement to exploit
the Al-Muglad Rift Basin on the seam line between Sudan’s Arab north
and the black African south. Due to the security concerns, the company
was forced to hire professional soldiers to protect its investment.
The instability of post-war Iraq has also turned private military
services into a booming cottage industry. Private military companies
have found a lucrative market in post-war Afghanistan.
Now with the saga surrounding the alleged Armenian mercenaries
getting more complex – with one of them literally scoffing at Kenyan
authorities – it is difficult to get the exact connection of their
presence and whether they are mercenaries or business people as
they claim.
Kenya has one of the most disciplined and respected military force in
Africa. Before the raid on the Standard Group premises, the police
force was known for its discipline. The defiance that the CID boss
has shown the Police Commissioner has tainted the image of the force.
LDP leaders, Raila Odinga and Kalonzo Musyoka have claimed that
mercenaries were brought in to assassinate key political leaders.
The Government spokesman, Alfred Mutua has denied the claims saying
that the matter is still being investigated.
But Internal Security minister John Michuki still has a lot of
explaining to do, given that the hand of the Government is evident
in the protection and confidence of the Artur brothers.
If the minister could order an illegal raid on the Standard Group in
the name of state security, why is it so difficult for him to explain
the defiant presence of dubious foreigners openly breaking the law
he is supposed to safeguard?

OFFICIALS QUESTION THE FATE OF DIPLOMAT
By Tania Chatila, News-Press and Leader
Glendale News Press, CA
March 26 2006
Reports say U.S. Ambassador to Armenia may be removed for genocide
comments.
GLENDALE — Rep. Adam Schiff and two other Congressmen have written
letters or questioned Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice regarding
reports that the U.S. Ambassador to Armenia is being removed from
his post over remarks he made last year acknowledging the Armenian
Genocide.
The concerns stem from remarks Ambassador John Marshall Evans made
on a visit to UC Berkeley in February 2005. Evans referred to the
1915 massacre of an estimated 1.5 million Armenians at the hands of
the Ottoman Turks as a genocide.
The U.S. government does not recognize the killing as a genocide.
“It was more than just mentioning it in passing,” said Aram Hamparian,
executive director of the Armenian National Committee of America, which
joined Schiff and Rep. Frank Pallone (D-New Jersey) and Rep. Grace
Napolitano (D-Santa Fe Springs) in writing letters to the White House
regarding the matter. “It was an explicit mention of the events and
why the U.S. government needs to properly recognize those events.”
Since then, Hamparian said the committee has received word that Evans
is being removed from his position because of the statements.
“Our information from friends in the American government and the
Armenian government is that he is being recalled,” Hamparian said. “I
am convinced that he is.”
But Terry Davidson, a State Department spokesman, said that he has
not been recalled.
“Generally, we don’t open up the personnel process, but ambassadors are
appointed by the president and serve at the pleasure of president,”
he said. “Currently, he is the ambassador in Yerevan [Armenia] and
until the president determines otherwise, he’ll be there.”
Despite the State Department’s official insistence on the matter,
the rumor has picked up speed and raised concerns.
Schiff said he proposed several questions to Rice at an open hearing
a few weeks ago, and last week met privately with a deputy secretary
of state and expressed his opposition to a recall.
“I expressed … I thought it would be real a travesty,” Schiff said.
“The American government doesn’t deny the facts of the genocide, and
while the government hasn’t demonstrated the courage to recognize it,
that certainly shouldn’t compound policy by discharging an ambassador
that chose to speak the truth.”
If the move goes through, it would be a setback for the
Armenian-American community, said Armond Aghakhanian, an executive
board member of the Glendale-based Armenian American Chamber of
Commerce.
“He’s been a great ambassador and then you get rid of him just because
of speaking the truth?” he said.
Aghakhanian said Evans’ fate is something that no one wants to admit.
“I think there are plenty of strong indications that [Evans’] tenure
is being cut short because of the comments,” Schiff said.
“It certainly has not been a career-enhancer and might be a
career-ender.”
Evans did not return calls for comment.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

ARMENIAN AMERICAN CHAMBER OF COMMERCE RECOGNIZES INFLUENTIAL BUSINESS AND LEADERS
By Tania Chatila, News-Press and Leader
Glendale News Press, CA
March 26 2006
Gala honors service
BURBANK — The best thing about owning or running a successful business
is the ability to give back to the community, according to officials
with the Glendale-based Armenian American Chamber of Commerce.
That was evident at the chamber’s third annual business awards gala
Friday night at The Castaway restaurant, where one business and two
local business owners were awarded for their support of the local
Armenian-American community.
About 400 people — including chamber members and local officials —
attended the event, which honored Bank of America as business of the
year, Alec Baghdasaryan as businessman of the year and Jenik Akopian
as businesswoman of the year.
“We just wanted to recognize the businesses, professionals and business
owners who are not only successful in their industry, but also manage
to give back to the communities they serve,” chamber Executive Director
Annette Vartanian said. “Anything possible they can do, they do it.”
The three honorees were chosen by a committee based on their
involvement in the community, said Armond Aghakhanian, an executive
board member of the chamber.
“These are good examples of businesses that are not only successful,
but really contribute back,” he said.
Baghdasaryan, who has lived in Glendale since 1987 and opened his
Glendale-based business, Information, Integration Group Inc. in 1991,
is a member of the Homenetmen Glendale Ararat Chapter and the Armenian
Educational Foundation.
“In my upbringing, my parents were always ready and willing to help
others,” Baghdasaryan said. “So I developed this sense of helping
others too.”
It is especially important for successful business owners to help
the Armenian American community because it is still a relatively new
community to the nation, he said.
For Akopian, the importance is in supporting the elderly because they
helped build the community and the Armenian American youth because
they will build the future, she said.
“I do believe in the community, and I believe in the young generation,”
she said.
Akopian, a Glendale resident, is also involved with the Armenian
Educational Foundation and the Homenetmen Glendale Ararat Chapter,
as well as being an administrator for Autumn Hills Health Care Center
in Glendale.
“It’s such a great feeling [to be honored],” she said.
“But again, my message is cherish your families, because without the
love and support of your families, no one can be successful.”
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

‘TERRIBLE FATE’; THE LEGACY OF ETHNIC CLEANSING
By Pamela H. Sacks, Telegram & Gazette Staff
Telegram & Gazette (Massachusetts)
March 21, 2006 Tuesday
All Editions
Historian Ben Lieberman was reflecting on Slobodan Milosevic shortly
after the Serbian strongman’s death last week in a jail cell in
The Hague.
Milosevic led Serbia, the dominant Yugoslav republic, into four Balkan
wars. At the time of his death from a heart attack, he was on trial
before an international tribunal, charged with 66 counts of war crimes,
including genocide, in Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo.
“Milosevic was at one time a socialist, or communist, and didn’t
care about national purity,” Mr. Lieberman said. “In the 1980s,
he realized he could draw power by manipulating opinions.”
Mr. Lieberman went on to explain that Milosevic’s actions fit a
historical pattern of ethnic cleansing, in which one group starts the
process by creating fear of another through the telling and retelling
of hate-filled stories. “In periods of crisis, those stories about
people who aren’t and haven’t been their enemies take over, even
among people who know better,” he said.
Ethnic-cleansing campaigns range from intimidation to terror to
violence that sometimes includes rape, Mr. Lieberman said. “Then
there’s extermination.”
Mr. Lieberman, who will speak Thursday at Clark University, has
traced ethnic cleansing over the past two centuries in eastern and
central Europe and Asia. His findings are presented in his new book,
“Terrible Fate: Ethnic Cleansing in the Making of Modern Europe.”
As the Ottoman, Russian, Austro-Hungarian and German empires collapsed
in the 19th century, waves of ethnic cleansing and related violence
changed the populations of towns and cities and transformed those vast
multi-ethnic empires into the nearly homogenous nation-states of today.
The decimation continued through the 20th century, with the Armenian
genocide, the two world wars, the Holocaust, the rise and fall of the
Soviet Union and, in the 1990s, the breakup of Yugoslavia. Monarchs
and dictators were fomenters, but so were democratically elected
leaders. Ordinary people often required little encouragement to rob
and brutalize their neighbors, Mr. Lieberman said. The Holocaust and
the Armenian genocide were not discrete atrocities but part of a much
broader process.
“Ethnic cleansing remade almost the entire map from Germany through
Turkey,” Mr. Lieberman, a professor at Fitchburg State College, said
by telephone from his campus office. “You could look at any town or
village and find the population was different 150 years ago.
Different minority populations were forced out – usually violently.”
The denial of the Armenian genocide by the Turkish government is,
he said, “part of the mythology of politics.” On the other hand,
there are many Turkish historians and scholars who do acknowledge
what happened, particularly if they are speaking privately or are
outside of their country.
“The Turks have a lot in common with other nations,” Mr. Lieberman
said. “Many nations have powerful national stories, and they are the
heroes, and they were victimized. They have a hard time understanding
and recognizing the suffering of others. You can look at the Turkish,
Armenian or Greek understanding of history – there are similar stories
of victimization. The Turks aren’t that different from other people.”
Today, there is reason to worry that ethnic cleansing is taking place
in Iraq, he said. Some argue that members of the two major Islamic
sects, the Shiite and the Sunni, are not different enough to touch off
widespread ethnic violence. Mr. Lieberman is not so sure. “The close
ties do not tell me there is not going to be more ethnic cleansing,”
he said.
Attitudes about ethnic cleansing have changed only in the last
15 years, Mr. Lieberman asserts. The idea was acceptable in the
mid-20th century. Even after World War II, he said, there was a
strong international consensus that sometimes people needed to live
in separate spheres to create long-term peace.
In the 1990s, attitudes changed in the face of the extreme brutality
occurring in the Balkans, where Mr. Milosevic played an important
and brutal role, and steps were taken to stop it.
“People used to say, `What could we do?’ Now, they say, `It is bad,'”
Mr. Lieberman said.
Nonetheless, little to no effort was made to stop the killing of
hundreds of thousands of Tutsi by the Hutu in the early 1990s in
Rwanda, and it is widely acknowledged that genocide is occurring in
the Darfur region of Sudan right now.
“Nicholas Kristof is writing about it,” Mr. Lieberman said, referring
to a columnist at The New York Times. “But I don’t think there’s been
an adequate response thus far.”
What: “Driven Off the Map” – a lecture by Professor Ben Lieberman,
presented by the Strassler Family Center for Holocaust and Genocide
Studies, Clark University
When: 7:30 p.m. Thursday
Where: Tilton Hall, Higgins University Center, Clark University,
950 Main St., Worcester
How much: Free and open to the public, to be followed by a reception.

AN EVOCATIVE TOUR OF ALL THAT IS ISTANBUL
By Keith Monroe
The Virginian-Pilot(Norfolk, VA.)
March 19, 2006 Sunday
The Virginian-Pilot Edition
ISTANBUL Memories and the City
ORHAN PAMUK
Knopf. 373 pp. $26.95.
SOME WRITERS flee home – Hemingway, Shakespeare, Zola. Others stay
home and cultivate their own little patch – Faulkner and Austen.
Orhan Pamuk is one of the latter. He grew up in the family’s Pamuk
Apartments where a grandmother or uncle was only a flight of stairs
away. Nearing 60, he still lives in the Pamuk Apartments.
Such rootedness can smack of the ingrown – Dickinson in Amherst,
Flaubert in provincial Rouen. But Pamuk inhabits a city so fascinating
and multifarious, it hardly seems eccentric to burrow deep.
This book begins at the beginning, and few writers have ever captured
the hothouse of childhood so well. Pamuk’s recollections are vivid
and deeply felt, and only gradually does he iris out from his family
– where a beloved mother feuds with a ne’er-do-well father who is
squandering the family fortune through ill-conceived business ventures.
As Pamuk learns about a wider world, we learn with him about his
adored city, often through the works of those who depicted it: The 18th
century German artist Memling, the French writers Nerval and Flaubert
and four melancholy Turks whom he counts as spiritual guides – Kemal,
Kocu, Hisar, and Tanipar.
This mixture of Western and Turkish influences is appropriate
in a Turkish writer who was raised as an unbelieving Muslim in a
westernized, bourgeois family. He observes of his Turkish artistic
forebears: “After long deliberation they found an important and
authentic subject, the decline and fall of the great empire into
which they were born.”
Pamuk himself was born a half century or more after these men,
in 1952. He has seen the crumbling city of his youth (population 1
million) metastasize into a sprawling 10-million-person megalopolis.
He mourns the replacement of much dilapidated ancient beauty with
even more dilapidated modern ugliness.
He could undoubtedly say a good deal about the decline of comity
as well in a city that has replaced habitual melancholy with rising
militancy. Pamuk was threatened with jail in 2005 for discussing the
brutal treatment of Armenians by Turks a century ago. But this book
stops long before the present.
In fact, it ends around 1970, with Pamuk as a lackadaisical student
of architecture who also paints. His distraught mother fears he’ll
try to make a living as an artist. “In a country as poor as ours,
around so many weak, defeated, semiliterate people, to have the sort
of life you deserve … you have to be rich.”
To which, with the comical, cocksure obliviousness of youth, he offers
Mom this reassurance: “I don’t want to be an artist. I’m going to be
a writer.”
It’s not exactly Joyce’s megalomaniac boast that he will forge the
uncreated conscience of his race in the smithy of his soul, but it
does show that “Istanbul’s” submerged theme is “A Portrait of the
Young Artist Discovering his Vocation.”
Since Pamuk is Turkey’s leading novelist and on the Nobel short list,
it seems to have worked out. Since the tale of his entire adulthood and
working life remains to be told, it also suggests that this luminous
book is only the first volume of memoirs we might expect >From him.
Almost half of the book’s page count is devoted to dozens of
astonishing photos by Ara Guler. He deserves to be regarded as the
Eugene Atget of Istanbul, and his cityscapes alone are worth the
price of admission.
They help make this book wonderfully evocative of a unique place –
part “Arabian Nights,” part Third World trash heap, part first world
capital.
* Keith Monroe lives in Greensboro, N.C.

HE PLAYS HIS WAY, WHEREVER;
Winston-Salem Journal (Winston Salem, NC)
March 19, 2006 Sunday
Metro Edition
Trumpeter’s Current Gig As A Freelancer Is With The Symphony
Ryan Anthony, a virtuoso trumpeter without a full-time gig, often
checks his calendar to see what jobs he has lined up over the next
12 months.
“It looks awfully blank,” he said. “You scratch your head and kind
of hope, ‘How are we going to get through the year?’ It always seems
to work out. Things come through.”
They do indeed.
The latest “thing” will happen next Sunday when Anthony teams up with
the Winston-Salem Symphony at the Stevens Center.
He will solo in Armenian Alexander Arutunian’s Trumpet Concerto in
A-flat Major (1950). The program will also include Brahms’ Variations
on a Theme by Haydn and Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony. Robert Moody
will conduct.
Symphony fans can get a taste of Anthony’s artistry when he performs
excerpts of the Arutunian concerto Saturday at the Stevens Center, as
part of a “Saturday Nights, Live!” program. This concert, also to be
conducted by Moody, will feature jazz singer Banu Gibson and the New
Orleans Hot Jazz swinging their way through classics from the 1920s,
’30s and ’40s.
Anthony, 36, may feel a freelancer’s anxieties over the uncertainties
of future employment. But he keeps filling his schedule with enough
part-time work to enjoy what he calls “a pretty full-time career.”
Each week, for example, he commutes from his home in Memphis, Tenn.
to Winston-Salem, where he is working as a visiting instructor at
the N.C. School of the Arts until May.
He has one of most unusual jobs in orchestral music, serving as
guest principal trumpeter of the Dallas Symphony Orchestra. When
I told Anthony that I’d never heard of such a position, he said,
“I haven’t either.” “It’s a dream job,” he said. “They fly me in to
do the Mahler and the Strauss, and all the big Shostakovich trumpet
works, and then I go home.”
Anthony will become the Dallas orchestra’s interim principal next
season, though he says that playing in an orchestra is “not something
I could do 100 percent all the time and make a career out of.” He has
done his share of studio recordings, for radio, television and motion
pictures. He champions tried-and-true solo fare for his instrument,
and he is getting composers to write him new works.
He went to London recently to appear on the inaugural recording
of Brass Classics, a series that will feature music performed by
principals from some of the world’s leading orchestras. On New
Year’s eve, he stood in front of the Pensacola Symphony in Florida
and soloed through one pops classic after another. He said he wants
to do something similar with the Winston-Salem Symphony after next
weekend’s concerts.
On many a Sunday, too, Anthony teams up with organist Gary Beard
at the Lindenwood Christian Church in Memphis. The two released an
eclectic recording, Ryan Anthony with Gary Beard, which features
everything from “Amazing Grace” to a Carmen fantasy.
“I like the extremes that organ pushes me to do,” Anthony said. “It
makes me feel like I have to go the distance, in all directions.”
Anthony will be the first to say how “incredibly lucky” he is to be
“doing all these things at a high level.” Plum free-lance work has
come his way because he is talented, knows how to market himself and
has learned a thing or two about cultivating relationships.
The marketing part shows up on his Web site, It
has just about everything a musician might need to promote himself,
including testimonials from leading musicians. One of the testimonials
is from Doc Severinsen:
“He (Anthony) is not only an impeccable trumpeter but has true
artistic depth in his playing,” Severinsen says. “Also, he has
extensive exposure to audience demands and knows the importance of
communicating with them. aI feel certain he will have a great and
distinguished career as a soloist.”
And Anthony is big believer in keeping lines of communication open
with, say, a conductor after an engagement ends.
“A lot of musicians don’t understand that,” he said. “They just go
and play and don’t realize that there’s a personal aspect to what
we do. That means getting to know somebody – not just on the podium
but off of it.” About two years ago, Anthony gave up one of the most
coveted permanent jobs in classical music – membership in the Canadian
Brass, probably the most popular quintet of its kind in the world. He
had been with the group for three years.
“To be honest, it was about 250 days a year on the road,” Anthony
said. “Once my 2-year-old (son Rowan) got old enough to say,
‘Daddy, don’t go,’ the pleasures of being on the road were quickly
diminishing.”
Anthony said he now controls his schedule a lot more than it used to
control him. That’s become even more important to Anthony, as his wife,
Niki, also gave birth to a daughter, Lili, now four months old.
The greater flexibility has afforded Anthony opportunities to do the
two things he said he loves most – perform chamber music or solo with
an orchestra.
As for the Arutunian concerto, Robert Simon conducted it a few
years ago with the Piedmont Wind Symphony. (Arturo Sandoval was the
soloist.) In the program notes for that performance, the concerto is
described as “a standard of the trumpet repertory.”
“Arutunian’s style makes use of Armenian folk elements, is rather
accessible and often explores the tension between classical and
romantic procedures,” the notes say.
Anthony described the concerto as one of favorites. The piece’s
beautiful, slow melodic lines come off well on his instrument,
he said. And he likes exploiting all the technically demanding,
fanfare-like passages.
“It allows me, as a performer, to take the audience through different
styles, different sounds and colors that the trumpet can do,” Anthony
said. “I have a lot of fun with it. I think that translates to the
audience.”

ANTHOLOGIST HELPS KICK OFF FRESNO COUNTY’S SESQUICENTENNIAL
Jim Guy The Fresno Bee
Fresno Bee (California)
March 24, 2006 Friday
Final Edition
Author celebrates Valley’s voices
When writer Gerald Haslam published “Many Californias,” an anthology
of California writers, he drew fire from a critic at the San Francisco
Chronicle because much of the work was by Fresno poets.
The critic argued that there should be more representation for other
California poets from cities such as Berkeley.
Haslam was quick to challenge the critic. What poets had Berkeley
produced in the past 40 years, Haslam asked, that can stand up to
the work of Valley poets? Haslam says the critic had the grace to
concede the point.
Haslam, a widely published author himself, spoke about “Fresno of the
Mind” on Thursday night in downtown Fresno to help kick off the first
event in the Fresno County Sesquicentennial, a yearlong celebration
of Fresno County’s 150th year. Books by Haslam include “The Great
Central Valley: California’s Heartland,” “Working Man’s Blues” and
“Coming of Age in California.”
Much as crops from all over the world have flourished here, Haslam
credits a diversity of people with hardworking roots for making the
written word blossom in the Valley.
He traces much of that back to William Saroyan, who was first to
acknowledge the complexity of society taking shape here in the early
part of the the 20th century through stories like “70,000 Assyrians,”
about an Armenian boy getting a haircut and a history lesson from
the victim of another diaspora.
Longtime California State University, Fresno, professor Philip Levine
is credited by Haslam for carrying on the tradition through nonelitist
poetry that pays homage to the everyday person.
“He put himself through school while wearing a shirt with his name
on it,” Haslam said. “He understood poverty. He understood diversity.”
Haslam cites “Death of a Hog,” a seemingly simple poem about a boy’s
coming of age as he helps slaughter a hog, as evidence of that.
“I think it’s possible that no one has done more to invent the
‘Fresno of the Mind’ than Levine,” he said.
Modern heirs of the tradition, Haslam says, include the prolific
author Gary Soto and historian/polemicist Victor Davis Hanson. The
two may have very different points of view, but that’s part of the
diversity, too.