‘In love with Komitas’
Ann Geerts
Pianist Keiko Shichijo will build two concert programs around the figure of composer Komitas Vardapet in the coming season.
Yerangi (Yerevan), female dance - Unabi and Marali (Shusha) - Shusiki (Vagharshapat) - Het u Araj (Erzurum) and Shoror (Erzurum), male dance.
Komitas Vardapet (1869-1935), the Armenian priest, composer, musicologist and poet was born 150 years ago, and is widely regarded as one of the most important musicians of the Armenian music tradition. Over thirty years before the Hungarian composers Béla Bartók and Zoltán Kodály engaged in transcripts of Eastern European folk music, Komitas kept busy with the extremely minutious study of folk music in the current border area of rmenia, Georgia and Turkey. He not only recorded thousands of Armenian folk songs but also Turkish and Kurdish songs. Much of his works have been lost in the then Armenian political tragedy, but the surviving works show his own folk songs, piano works and dance.
Keiko Shichijo came in touch with Komitas's music by participating in a project about the music of the famous Armenian-American jazz drummer Paul Motian. She fell in love with Komitas's music and this led to the recording of the album 'Six Dances' in 2016.
Keiko Shichijo offers two different programs within the title 'In Love with Komitas':
1. A Tribute to Komitas Vardapet (*)
2. Original piano work of Komitas Vardapet (*)
Both programs can be played on a Steinway and / or original Steinweg Nachf piano anno 1880.At an evening concert, two additional Armenian works can be added to the program. (*) Details on request