Born
in Gyumri, Armenia, in 1987, Tigran grew up in a household that was
full of music. When he was just a toddler, he gravitated to tape players
and the piano instead of regular childhood toys, and by the time he was
3, he was working his way through figuring out songs on piano by the
Beatles, Louis Armstrong, Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple and Queen. His jazz
tastes early on were informed by Miles Davis’s
fusion period, and then around the age of 10 when his family moved to
Yerevan, he came to discover the classic jazz songbook under the aegis
of his teacher Vahag Hayrapetyan, who had studied with Barry Harris.
While
he studied classical music at an Armenian high school geared toward
music studies, Tigran continued to grow on his own as a jazz pianist. He
performed at the First International Jazz Festival in Yerevan in 1998,
which opened up other performance opportunities, and he returned to the
festival for its second edition in 2000. Along the way he met promoter
Stephane Kochoyan, who booked him to play several European festivals.
When
he was 16, his parents moved to Los Angeles to give their two children
(Tigran’s sister is a painter and sculptor) better artistic
opportunities. Tigran stayed in high school for two months before
gaining entrance to USC, which he attended for two years. Soon he began
to win a series of piano competitions, including the top prize at the
Monk competition and second place in the 2006 Martial Solal
International Jazz Competition in Paris.
At the same time, Tigran
began to make contact with such L.A. jazz musicians as Alphonso Johnson
and Alan Pasqua, and started gigging with saxophonist Ben Wendel and
drummer Wood, who continue to play with him today.
With his
prowess established from the Monk honor as well as his small, but
impressive catalog, Tigran’s career has been on an upswing. With A
Fable, he continues to make another giant stride in the jazz world.
For
his new album, Tigran Hamasyan delivers a dynamic solo piano
collection, A Fable, with lyrical songs that range from gracefully
refined pieces to energetic experiments with rhythmic and harmonic
diversity. One of today’s most vital and original young jazz artists who
won the prestigious Thelonious Monk International Jazz Piano
Competition in 2006, Tigran finds inspiration from traditional Armenian
folk music as well as poetry. With all of the songs featuring Tigran’s
inventive arrangements, A Fable features the pianist’s own compositions
as well as a wealth of covers, including Armenian melodies and a
mystical rendition of the jazz standard, “Someday My Prince Will Come,”
as well as music inspired by the poetry of Hovhannes Tumanyan and Gegham
Saryan.
“The title of the album came to me because all of the
compositions are telling a story,” says the New York-based Tigran. “I
think people relate to fables because they are simple, yet deep.” As for
recording a solo album after three recordings that featured a full
band, he says, “A lot of people heard me perform solo concerts and
wanted to hear me in this setting.”
Recorded in Paris, A Fable
contains compositions that Tigran wrote and arranged over the past six
years. The repertoire consists of mostly personal compositions as well
as pieces by other composers that he has arranged. The title track, a
Tigran original, was written in Armenia six years ago. “Since then I
have been meaning to have it recorded,” he says. “This song was inspired
by Armenian folk tales as well as fables written by medieval Armenian
fabulists such as Vardan Aygektsi and Mkhitar Gosh.”
Most of the
other songs on A Fable were composed in recent years while some were
written even in the last days before the actual recording. “It has been
on my mind for a long time to work on a solo piano repertoire and
recording an album,” Tigran says, who enlisted the help of his longtime
band mate, drummer Nate Wood, to record, mix and master the album. “The
simple idea of performing alone in a room with an acoustic piano has
been one of the most natural, and yet challenging ways to express myself
musically. It is challenging because of the fact that the only two band
members that you can interact with and count on are you and the piano.
Yet at the same time the freedom that you have while performing alone is
deeply inspiring.”
In some instances on A Fable, Tigran came
prepared with specific ideas, while on other occasions he played nonstop
in the studio to “see what would happen. That’s how I came up with a
few of the songs and improvisation, and developed ideas for overdubs and
even some vocal challenges.” The result is a potent jazz recording by
an imaginative artist who freely and courageously pursues his own
musical vision, not only built on tradition but also infused with his
own personality and passion.
The 13-track A Fable opens with the
gentle, quiet “Rain Shadows” (Tigran says it’s a mood tune “mixed in a
way for the piano to sound like a music box to create a ‘30s-‘40s vibe”)
that serves as the introduction to “What the Waves Brought,” that has a
dramatic bounce, stutter steps and a whistling sound. “It has two
sections,” Tigran says. “This tune reminds me of ocean waves.”
Other
originals include the technically challenging but highly melodic
“Samsura,” played brightly in 5/8 time, that is introduced by the
mysterious “Illusion.” In addition, there’s “A Memory That Became a
Dream,” another “mood song” that Tigran wrote the night before going
into the studio and recorded with wordless vocals on the first take; and
the energetic, tumbling “Carnaval,” also with wordless vocals that
follow the drive of Tigran’s pianism.
For the latter, Tigran says,
“I didn’t know if this would sound full enough on solo piano because I
had an arrangement for it for my quintet that included many layers. But I
asked Nate to play percussive rhythms on the music stand and the floor,
and I added in the vocals. That’s how it came together in the studio.”
Two
songs come by way of Tigran’s love of poetry. The moving piece,
“Longing,” is based on two quatrains by the famous Armenian poet
Hovhannes Tumanyan who wrote about exiled Armenians in the late 19th and
early 20th century who were longing for home. The pensive, dreamy “The
Legend of the Moon” is based on 20th century poet Gegham Saryan’s poem
that was a favorite of Tigran’s since he was a child.
“The Spinners”
is a beautiful Tigran arrangement of mystic/philosopher George
Ivanovich Gurdjieff’s piece of music that was a collaboration with
pianist/composer Thomas de Hartmann (Keith Jarrett recorded an album of
their music, Sacred Hymns, in 1994).
Well-known for melding jazz
with traditional Armenian melodies, Tigran again borrows from the rich
tradition of his heritage on A Fable. The dance-like “Kakavik (The
Little Partridge),” which opens gently then develops into a brisk end,
is a 4/4 arrangement of a famous Armenian tune. Included are both its
melody and an expansive improvisational section. The collection
concludes with the melancholy, searching “Mother, Where Are You?” Says
Tigran: “This is one of my favorite songs ever that I knew I wanted to
record when I decided to make a solo album. It’s a religious hymn that
was arranged for a choir originally. I arranged it to have the melody be
intact. It’s the perfect ending tune. It’s an ending with a lot of
meaning.”
As for the inclusion of “Someday My Prince Will Come,”
composed by Frank Churchill and Larry Morey for the 1937 Walt Disney
film, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Tigran says he wanted to have one
jazz standard in the mix. “I wanted to do a standard but not make it
sound like jazz so that it would work better with the context of the
album,” he says. “So I experimented with taking a pretty happy song and
completely changed the harmonies into a darker setting.”
Previous
to his signing by Universal Music Classics & Jazz France, Tigran
recorded three albums on European labels as a leader: World Passion
(2006), New Era (2008) and Red Hail (2009). He’s been heralded as a jazz
revelation by critics who have been impressed by his artistry, with one
scribe writing about New Era that “with more seasoning and a calming
maturity…Hamasyan is certain to elevate his art to a top tier of jazz
and world music expressionism.”
