Lusine

Sergey Khachatryan’s fifth recording on Naïve, and second with his sister, is dedicated to the three luminous and deeply romantic sonatas for violin and piano by Johannes Brahms. Spread over ten years, from 1878 to 1888, the three sonatas are contemporary with his four symphonies and are flanked by the Violin Concerto in D major (1878) and the Double Concerto for violin and cello in A minor (1887).

The three sonatas for violin and piano of Brahms are each in three movements, but they have more in commom with the composer's knotty late chamber music than with the amateur-oriented world of the majority of violin sonatas in the 19th century. Each elaborates a basic mood or structure, the first intensely songful, the second compact and full of symbolic allusion, and the third capricious and often ethereal. They need room and a certain broad, relaxed quality to bring out all the detail without losing the essential lyrical nature of the genre and all the songs that are quoted or evoked across the set. The requisite breadth is there in this release by the highly photogrenic Armenian-born duo of Sergey and Lusine Khachatryan.

Dedicated to the 100th Commemoration of the Armenian Genocide, My Armenia offers a very personal, touching and brilliant tribute to Armenian music by Sergey and Lusine Khachatryan. Sergey and Lusine are regular duo partners. Together, they have given recitals at London's Wigmore Hall, Konzerthaus Dortmund, Paris Theatre des Champs-Elysees, Madrid Auditori Nacional, Amsterdam Concertgebouw, Brussels Bozar, Luxemburg Philharmonie and New York Carnegie Hall.

Complete in itself, this solo piano album by Lusine Grigoryan, can also be considered a companion volume to the Gurdjieff Ensemble’s critically-acclaimed album of Komitas’s music. It was recorded at the same 2015 session in Lugano, directed by Manfred Eicher, and has some overlapping of repertoire. Where Levon Eskenian’s versions with the Gurdjieff Ensemble explored some of the composer’s sonic inspirations with folk instruments, Lusine Grigoryan conveys some of the same colours with her wide palette of piano articulation and her exploration of timbral possibilities: in her playing one can catch the flavour of the duduk, the tar, the zurna et cetera, as Komitas intended. As Levon Eskenian has noted, Grigoryan “conveys the mysterious presence typical of rustic and ritual music.” Pieces heard on this recording, the ECM debut of Lusine Grigoryan, include Komitas’s Seven Songs, Seven Dances, Pieces for Children, and Msho Shoror.

Lusine Zakaryan (Armenian: Լուսինե Զաքարյան), born Svetlana Zakaryan, (June 1, 1937 in Akhaltsikhe, Georgian SSR – December 30, 1992, in Yerevan, Armenia), was an Armenian soprano. She grew up in the Samtskhe-Javakheti region of southern Georgia. In 1952, she moved with her family to Yerevan, where she attended a secondary music school. She entered the Yerevan State Musical Conservatory in 1957 and her singing talent soon became clear.
From 1970 to 1983, Zakaryan was a soloist with the symphony orchestra of Armenian TV and Radio. She also sang in the choir of the Armenian Apostolic Church's Holy See at the Echmiadzin Cathedral, and it is for her magnificent rendition of centuries-old Armenian spiritual hymns that she is now most remembered.
Zakaryan was also known for singing the international opera repertoire as well as Armenian traditional and church music.

“Hover” choral ensemble was established within “Hover” State Chamber Choir. It is gathered from the leading singers of the choir, who are also orchestra musicians. It started to appear in Europe as “Armenian Voices” since January 2012.
Gevorg Avetisyan is one of the leading flutists of Armenian Philharmonic, State Youth orchestras and Opera Theatre orchestra. Kim Sargsyan is a violinist of Armenian National Opera and Ballet Theatre.,.

Language Barrier is Jeff Mcilwain's first album for Hymen Records since his Iron City full length, released in 2002. Here, Mcilwain explores his ambient side to a fuller extent than in any of his previous releases. beautiful chord structures melt with excerpts from his huge archive of field recordings. Characteristic layers and treatments are mostly kept together by a metric structure accented with subtle rhythms. 'Jetstream', for example, gets this structure from a sample-and-hold-like-treatment - restrained, but still very sonically detailed. Language Barrier is ambient electronic music at it's best, providing a relaxed, entrancing sentiment - music to be listened to, carefully and often.