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Armenian-American teen cultivates a passion for standards

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  • Armenian-American teen cultivates a passion for standards

    The Star-Ledger - NJ
    Nov 13 2009



    Fluent in jazz
    Armenian-American teen cultivates a passion for standards
    LUCINE 'LUSI' YEGHIAZARYAN


    Story by RONNI REICH / FOR THE STAR-LEDGER
    Photos by STEVE HOCKSTEIN / FOR THE STAR-LEDGER


    Huddled around a stove with her three sisters, her father and her
    mother, who strummed a guitar by candlelight, Lucine Yeghiazaryan
    learned her first songs. `We had electricity for only one hour each
    day,' says her mother, Karine Arshakyan. `In the evening, we had to
    keep the kids busy with something, so we would sing.'

    Her interests, Lusi says, are painting and otherwise `all music.'
    Here, she practices violin in her bedroom.

    Lusi, 18, shares a cup of coffee with her `grandma,' Seda Sarksyan, at
    home in Hewitt.

    Lucine `Lusi' Yeghiazaryan, left, learned her first songs from her
    mom, Karine Arshakyan. Below, Lusi, 18, shares a cup of coffee with
    her `grandma,' Seda Sarksyan, at home in Hewitt.

    In 1991, when the girl nicknamed `Lusi' was born, Armenia had just
    broken from the Soviet Union and the country suffered an economic
    crisis. For Lusi and her family, music became not just a way to spend
    evenings, but also a way to entertain neighbors.

    A local flute teacher noticed their talent and Arshakyan began
    entering her daughters in competitions. Sona, 11 and the oldest, was
    the artist of the family, and Lusi, 4, and Mary, 3, were both too
    young. So 7-year-old Tatev was the first to take the stage.

    Lusi watched intently and family photos show her wide-eyed, focused
    and mentally recording everything around her. After one community
    event, where children were invited to perform, little Lusi stalked
    home in tears. She cried to her mother, `Why didn't you ask me to
    sing?'

    `I remember being young and wanting to perform so badly,' says Lusi,
    now 18 and a West Milford High School senior living in Hewitt. `It
    would always irritate me when we were at concerts ' I was like, `Man,
    I want to be up onstage right now!'...'

    An animated, restless charisma emanates as she recalls her almost
    lifelong urge to perform. With a rich, slightly accented voice and
    classic movie star elegance, Lusi commands a crowd with the knowing
    authority of a veteran. From years of shows performed here and in
    Armenia with her sisters to more recent appearances at jazz clubs like
    the Blue Note, Lusi already has begun to make her mark across oceans,
    language barriers and musical worlds.

    Music seems to pour from the teenager with thick, wavy chestnut hair
    and large, long-lashed brown eyes. She smiles and works the mic as she
    sings with liquid flexibility, the tone clear, direct and round, with
    a sparkling vibrato and elements of sweetness, warmth and a little
    spice. As she performs `I Should Care,' at the New Jersey Performing
    Arts Center's Victoria Theater, Lusi's long history with jazz becomes
    evident.

    Taking cues from Chet

    Lusi heard her first standards streaming from her father's basement
    art studio in Armavir, Armenia. Mels Yeghiazaryan, a woodcarving
    artist, was fanatical about jazz, and as Lusi idly painted by his
    side, she developed a love for Chet Baker and other legends, from whom
    she took her singing cues.

    `Chet Baker is the man,' she says. `He's so amazing ' people don't see
    it, but I'm so in love with him. Not just because he was handsome, but
    he was a great musician and a great singer at the same time ' with
    absolutely no technique, but an amazing unique sound.'


    Lucine `Lusi' Yeghiazaryan, left, learned her first songs from her
    mom, Karine Arshakyan. Below, Lusi, 18, shares a cup of coffee with
    her `grandma,' Seda Sarksyan, at home in Hewitt.

    She says she learned from his straightforward, laid-back style, and
    later became entranced with Brazilian jazz, especially Astrud
    Gilberto. Lusi developed a philosophy far different from many singers
    her age, who eagerly dress up melodies with flourishes to show off
    their vocal prowess.

    `I love simplicity,' Lusi says. `People can make music complicated,
    too fast and too much in too many places and too often. That's not
    what music is about. It's not about how fast your fingers can go up
    and down a piano, and I feel like people are forgetting that.'

    The refined taste, devotion and natural feeling she has for jazz stood
    out when she and her family moved to New Jersey and impressed the
    faculty of the NJPAC's Jazz for Teens study program, which accepted
    her as a scholarship student in 2003.

    `Lusi's talent was obvious to me when I first heard her at age 13,'
    writes jazz vocalist and teacher Roseanna Vitro in an e-mail. `Lusi is
    a true improvisational singer, although she chooses many times to
    simply sing the lyrics with an innate maturity and sensuality, well
    beyond her years.

    `She is very sensitive, and she listens and learns quickly.'

    A trio starts out

    Three young women, each a head taller than the next, dance around one
    another, singing songs from `Jingle Bells' to close-harmonied
    traditional Armenian songs, followed by `Summertime.'

    At one point, the smallest, about 7 years old ' shoulders and hips
    moving with relaxed grace and in perfect rhythm ' grasps the
    microphone tightly and looks to her left, following her older sisters'
    lead.


    `I love simplicity. People can make music complicated, too fast and
    too much in too many places and too often.' ' LUCINE YEGHIAZARYAN

    As the YY sisters ' Y for Yeghiazaryan and Y for Yerevan, the capital
    of Armenia ' Sona, Tatev and Lusi (youngest daughter Mary, now 17,
    does not perform) appeared at jazz festivals and cultural events in
    their homeland. They also won Armenian national competitions, and Lusi
    got a musical education and the opportunity to bond with her sisters.

    Tatev, now 21 and studying jazz at William Paterson University,
    arranged the music, Lusi learned to read the notes while studying
    violin, and they taught the music to Sona. If arguments grew heated at
    times ' `we're sisters, so we can call each other whatever we want' '
    the collaborative process brought them closer.

    `The rehearsals were treacherous because you had to bang out every
    note, but it was fun,' Lusi recalls.

    The group's success continued, and Arshakyan decided her family should
    come to America in 2003, so that her daughters could pursue their
    talents. They continued the trio after moving to Hewitt that year and
    developed a following in the Armenian community.

    `We got pretty wide recognition,' Lusi says.

    In a living room where delicate original paintings and intricate,
    smooth-lined woodcarvings adorn walls, and photo albums fill shelves,
    Lusi sips coffee while having a conversation with Seda Sarksyan, the
    woman she calls her grandmother.

    Sarksyan is a distant relative who found the family through their
    church. She needed support, so they took her in to live with them
    because Arshakyan wanted to `pay forward' the help she had received
    from the Armenian community when they first moved to the United
    States. She also wanted her children to see, firsthand, the importance
    of family.

    `You can sacrifice a little bit to help someone,' she says.

    Mom's guidance

    Her mother was instrumental in Lusi's career, not only being the first
    to move and find her footing through a series of survival jobs before
    becoming a child psychologist and art teacher, but also by teaching
    Lusi her first songs.

    Lusi entered her first national competition at age 5 when she didn't
    know how to read, so Arshakyan recorded the words to songs and played
    them over and over again, 10 to 15 times in a row. While Lusi was
    playing, she would listen to the music and her mother would teach her
    to pronounce the words ' even then, she loved jazz and wanted to sing
    in English.

    She won that competition, and as others followed, Arshakyan grew to
    realize that her reaction to her daughter's singing was more than
    motherly pride.

    `Lusi is very sincere,' she says. `She sings with her soul and she
    doesn't force anything, and it just flows and I melt away.'

    Appreciative of all her mother's efforts and the life-changing move to
    America, Lusi gazes admiringly and affectionately at her as she says,
    `In Armenia, girls study their butts off and go to college, and the
    year you graduate, you get married, the next year have kids and
    that's it. She saw more for us.'

    When Sona, now 24, got married and Tatev left for college, the trio
    stopped its formal performances, although they still sing together.
    While its focus had been on Armenian music, the YY sisters gave Lusi
    her first taste of straddling cultural worlds, which became an
    important skill for her after relocating. One year after the move,
    Arshakyan persuaded Lusi to resume auditions, even as she was still
    learning English.

    `You know, you're so self-conscious, when you don't know the language
    and you want to get a hold of things before you actually take a step
    into something,' Lusi recalls.

    She had been subdued and often pensive as a child, and her mother
    refers to her as an old soul with a philosophical mindset. At first,
    the family's move made her turn more inward.

    Moving to a country in which she didn't speak the language `made me
    less talkative because it forces you to listen and not speak until you
    know what you're saying,' Lusi says. `I was quiet for a whole year,
    just listening.'

    Adapting to a new language and culture was difficult and tiring, Lusi
    says. `But I'm glad it happened because I feel like I absorbed both
    cultures at the same time,' she says.

    Straddling two cultures

    Lusi thinks of herself as both Armenian and `Americanized' in equal
    measure, more so than her older sisters, who identify more as the
    former and her younger sister who seems more the latter. Lusi takes
    great pride in Armenian musical and artistic life.

    `It's such an old culture that you can hear a religious tune from the
    second century or modern classical composers,' she says. `We've got
    this huge range of music, and it makes you very diverse.

    `We've been around a long time, and we've absorbed so many centuries
    of war and peace and art and love ' all of that is in the music.'

    With her successes as part of a trio and as a solo singer, Lusi
    learned many lessons ' including self-confidence. `I don't think I
    realized I was a good singer until two or three years ago,' she says.
    `I'm really picky with the way I sing.'

    About halfway through her studies at NJPAC, she announced to Don
    Braden, who heads the program, that she needed to quit. She felt
    terrible about backing out, but he advised her to take her time.

    `I want to know if this is what I want to do, and then we can go on,'
    Lusi says she told him.

    `I was like, `I'm not a singer, what am I doing?'...' she remembers. `I
    wasn't satisfied. I hate comparing myself to the mediocrity because
    you don't get anywhere, and I was comparing myself to the greats.'

    Looking into the future, she couldn't imagine that she would make a
    mark in the line of jazz singers. She stopped singing for a year. As
    time passed, though, she could no longer resist.

    `I just want to count off a band now!' she told herself, imagining
    leading a jazz song again.

    She resumed studying and performing at NJPAC, appearing at the Blue
    Note, Trumpets and Cecil's, and recording a CD, produced with help
    from Vitro and a guest appearance by Braden. She's the only student of
    theirs to receive such treatment.

    Lusi is giving serious thought to her future, weighing the option of
    pursuing jazz professionally and trying her hand at other careers.

    `I believe in Lusi's talent, and I feel that with the right breaks,
    hard work and a good attitude that she could become the next Astrud
    Gilberto/Peggy Lee, but, of course, in contemporary terms,' Vitro
    writes. `Perhaps a jazzy Lady Gaga? The sky is the limit for Lusi and
    all she needs to do is keep singing.'

    Lusi, who speaks Armenian, Russian, English and some French, is
    considering foreign relations study as well.

    `I want to feel fulfilled by the time I'm 60, knowing that I didn't
    just have a job that proved my talent, but also a job that proved my
    intelligence,' she says.

    But jazz keeps its hold.

    `Even when songs don't have lyrics, I love how something is
    transmitted to the audience through just a sound you make,' she says.
    `Music puts people into a state that nothing else does ' and I love
    that.'


    Hobbies: Sports? `Absolutely not!' Yeghiazaryan paints, but otherwise,
    she's `all music.'

    Travel dream: Visiting Chinese villages and working in rice fields.
    `When you're just a tourist, you don't get to see how people live.'

    Favorite school subject: History

    Style icon: Audrey Hepburn, whose photo decorates her room

    Best criticism: Reviewing her performance in her high school
    production of `The Boyfriend,' a musical theater competition judge
    said she was `too Edith Piaf.'

    http://blog.nj.com/iamnj/2009/11/lucine_lu si_yeghiazaryan.html
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