Lembit Beecher and Karen Ouzounian kind a dynamic husband-wife inventive partnership, harmonizing their collaborative tasks with their particular person inventive pursuits. Ouzounian is a founding member of the Aizuri Quartet and performs with Rhiannon Giddens’ Silk Street Ensemble. On his half, composer-animator Beecher attracts inspiration from his Estonian people tradition, delving into themes of place, migration, pure processes, and ecology. Their current works, together with Beecher’s Inform Me Once more Cello Concerto and their co-written piece “Pricey Mountains,”, mirror their household histories and broader concepts surrounding displacement, tradition, and belonging. Their newest mission, Mayrig, extends this exploration additional.
Scheduled to debut on July 10 on the Morgenland Pageant in Osnabrück, Germany, Mayrig (which means “mom” in Armenian) is a one-hour program that includes cello, electronics, piano, and vocals, described as “a deeply private, intimate program centered on the human voice.” This intimacy stems from Ouzounian’s household legacy, the place her kinfolk survived the Lebanese Civil Warfare (1975-1990) and the Armenian Genocide (1915-1923). The items intertwine the phrases of Ouzounian’s mom and grandmother with preparations of Anatolian music, harkening again to her household residence and reflecting Lebanese songs and tales, together with the music of French-Armenian singer/songwriter Charles Aznavour, together with recent compositions from Beecher, Layale Chaker, Nathalie Joachim, and Niloufar Nourbakhsh. Their shared narratives contact on topics like conflict, identification, resilience, and celebration.
We sat down with Beecher and Ouzounian to delve deeper into Mayrig and extra.
Your current collaborations have centered on migration and compelled displacement, incorporating household histories. When did you notice these tales needs to be woven into musical tasks?
Lembit: My Estonian grand-uncle Ilmar offered me with a set of tapes within the early Nineties, across the time of Estonia’s Independence. These tapes featured him singing and recounting tales of his childhood and experiences in the course of the Soviet occupation. Regardless of being an architect, he was additionally an beginner violinist and composer. The best way he narrated his tales, mixing track and narrative, left an enduring impression on me. Within the early 2000s, I started recording my grandmother, Taimi, sharing her personal tales about Estonia, WWII, and her migration to the U.S. These narratives, wealthy in drama and theatricality, evoked a craft that resonated deeply with me.
Initially, my motivation to file her tales was about preserving our household historical past. Nevertheless, I quickly acknowledged that her storytelling—delivered in her profoundly musical voice—occupied an area that bridged reminiscence and efficiency. This realization prompted me to aim to reply musically to the magnetism of her tales. In 2009, I composed a documentary oratorio known as And Then I Keep in mind, melding her voice with solo soprano, solo double bass, chamber ensemble, male refrain, and video. Since then, I’ve developed to include interviews and testimonies into my compositions, working with communities outdoors my very own, as exemplified by my piece Say House for the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, which interweaved the voices of assorted Twin Cities residents into an orchestral material. But, I constantly re-examine the query: why music?
Karen: From a younger age, I used to be aware of my household’s background, significantly the Armenian Genocide and the cultural presence of Lebanon in our Toronto residence, the place my household relocated post-genocide within the Twenties. Because the youngest little one, I typically felt shielded from my household’s extra painful recollections by my siblings and oldsters. In the course of the COVID pandemic, as my household discovered themselves in numerous corners of the world, I started to mirror deeply on them. This led to a sequence of profound interviews with my relations. Provided that music is a crucial side of Armenian identification, it felt important to convey these familial tales via music.
Studying extra about Armenian life and my household’s historical past in Anatolia has intensified my listening expertise. In Mayrig, I carry out a transcription we created of a 1917 recording by Kemany Minas and Harry Hasekian, titled Eghin Havasi, an Anatolian Armenian track sung in Turkish with the phrase “mayrig” inserted into the vocal line. This recording was made in New York Metropolis amid the Genocide, and Minas’s ethereal and mournful voice resonates with me intensely, particularly as I now higher perceive my household’s roots.
Household histories can evolve over time like a sport of phone. How did you navigate this within the creation of Mayrig?
Karen: In creating Mayrig, our focus was to not convey a proper narrative of household historical past however to evoke the fragmented connections between our familial pasts and up to date lives. I envision it as inviting the viewers into the intricate dwelling area of 1’s existence: mixing multilingual soundscapes from intergenerational gatherings, childhood tales from my mom Lena about her life in Lebanon, people music from Armenia and Anatolia, and trendy items by Layale Chaker, Nathalie Joachim, Niloufar Nourbakhsh, and Lembit, every including their distinctive perspective.
When narratives floor in this system, I aimed for them to look organically, leaving them unexamined, as a pure a part of our day by day lives. Throughout my collaboration with Lembit on his piece Inexperienced Line, primarily based on my mom’s recollections, we recorded her recounting the identical story twice to seize the spontaneity and nuances in her storytelling, intentionally avoiding the notion of a single concrete model.
One motion of Mayrig begins with an impromptu recording I captured on my cellphone of my mom and grandmother singing an everlasting Armenian tune known as Mardigi Yerke on my grandmother’s ninety fifth birthday. Their laughter and dialog weave via their singing, and the energy of my grandmother’s voice in that second was profoundly highly effective. In Mayrig, I mix this recording with dwell cello and vocals, harmonizing to proceed their track. I hope to convey a way of cultural continuity whereas additionally acknowledging transformation.
Are there notable variations in performing works deeply tied to your private experiences versus extra summary items? How does a mission like this influence your efficiency?
Karen: Sharing familial tales is an emotionally intense and weak expertise that lacks outlined boundaries. Infusing private context right into a efficiency can really feel each disorienting and illuminating, making a profound resonance throughout the work.
It’s important to notice that performing summary music doesn’t render me emotionally indifferent. My purpose as a performer is to totally embody the music, enabling it to dwell via me, as all music embodies a human aspect. Nevertheless, the connection I construct with extra summary items develops over time via intuition and creativeness. In distinction, music drawn immediately from household tales carries fast emotional weight that I need to be taught to direct successfully.
One distinctive problem of this program is discovering steadiness between “performer me” and “daughter and granddaughter me.” When rehearsing the association of Mardigi Yerke, which options recordings of my mom and grandmother, I initially struggled to mission my voice! In Inexperienced Line, the emotional connection feels totally different since I hear my mom’s voice—arguably the voice I’m most aware of—echoing in my thoughts even throughout solo follow. The flickering depth of that reminiscence provides depth to the music. We previewed this program for my mom, and discovering how sure items resonated along with her—like Charles Aznavour’s La Mamma—made the efficiency terribly poignant!
In Inexperienced Line, Karen’s mom, Lena Ouzounian, speaks on stability and wishing for continuity. Are you able to elaborate on the importance of this piece throughout the program and its historic context in Beirut?
Lembit: In Mayrig, we aimed to create a layered musical universe wealthy with historical past, ready to be unearthed beneath the floor. In a number of items, this historical past involves the forefront. Inexperienced Line intertwines excerpts from interviews with Karen’s mom, Lena, inserting her voice alongside Karen’s cello. This piece recounts a selected day in 1980 in the course of the Lebanese Civil Warfare when Lena needed to cross the Inexperienced Line—the boundary between East and West Beirut—to achieve the Canadian embassy. Karen’s household, survivors of the Armenian Genocide, had come to Beirut within the Twenties together with numerous different Armenian refugees. Because the Lebanese Civil Warfare unfolded within the late Nineteen Seventies and Eighties, many Armenians discovered themselves rediasporized, beginning anew in overseas lands.
By items like Inexperienced Line (alongside different narratives from Lena featured in Mayrig), we aspire to encourage audiences to discover Armenian and Lebanese historical past. Nevertheless, our major focus with Mayrig is to foster an intimate memory-driven expertise that resonates universally, permitting viewers members to mirror on their very own familial histories and journeys.
We hope this immersive world encourages curiosity about all of the music offered, together with works by Layale Chaker, Nathalie Joachim, and Niloufar Nourbakhsh, all carrying tales and histories ready to be found.
Music For The Passing of Days is contemplative, marking the day by day transitions of a 12 months via miniatures. Are you able to share the background of this work and the selection of its eighth motion for Mayrig?
Lembit: Mayrig oscillates between narrative and the summary, emphasizing that our household histories resonate all through our lives in each delicate and overt methods. Music for the Passing of Days, initiated in 2023, consists of a sequence of meditations, with every motion crafted primarily in a single day, consciously devoid of a selected theme.
Each Karen and I’ve composed extensively primarily based on our private recollections and household tales. Nevertheless, integrating two actions of Music for the Passing of Days (Mvt. 1 and Mvt. 8) into Mayrig felt harmonious, permitting the general program to breathe because it shifts via numerous timelines and areas.
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