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ARMEN DONELIAN PERFORMS SEPT. 23 IN NEW HAVEN
By Owen Mcnally, Special To The Courant
Hartford Courant
Sept 22 2011
CT
Although he has a blue-chip resume, a distinctive personal sound as a
pianist and composer and has just released his ninth envelope-pushing
album on Sunnyside Records, Armen Donelian is hardly a household
name, except perhaps in the hippest of homes where adventurous,
often lyrical cutting-edge music is revered.
Donelian, leads his bold, cohesive quintet Friday, Sept. 23 at 8:30
and 10 p.m. at New Haven's Firehouse 12.
Celebrating the release of his CD, "Leapfrog," the bandleader is
joined at Firehouse 12 by his four colleagues on his new disc: Dutch
saxophonist Marc Mommaas, guitarist Mike Moreno, bassist Dean Johnson
and drummer Tyshawn Sorey, an inventive percussionist who combines
muscularity with musicianly smarts.
Look for a repertoire rooted in the material on "Leapfrog," which
features eight Donelian compositions. Released this month, the album
was recorded, mixed and mastered last year at Firehouse 12 by the
cutting-edge music center's owner and chief engineer Nick Lloyd.
Donelian, who studied with the harmonically advanced, probing pianist
Richie Beirach, is an expressionist composer who ranges easily in
mood from the dark and forebodingly tumultuous to the mysterious
and dreamy. "Rage," the CD opener, is drenched in brooding, almost
obsessively compulsive thematic repetition, generating a dizzying
mood accentuated by the empathetic unison guitar/piano passages
spun by Moreno and Donelian. But the very next track, "The Poet," in
dramatic contrast, glides mysteriously above it all, a reassuringly
serene sotto voce response to the tempestuous atmospherics of "Rage."
"The inspiration for this music came from my reflections on where the
world is going these days," Donelian explains of the CD's shifting
moods, including the joyful, leapfrogging, energy of the CD's grand
finale, "Inner Sanctum."
Even before he stepped out into the jazz world, Donelian, as a
musically gifted child of Armenian parents, was immersed in his home
in Armonk, NY, with the sounds of Armenian, Turkish, Greek and Middle
Eastern music both at festive, music-filled family gatherings and
through his father's record collection. His father, who was born in
the old Ottoman Empire and had lost dozens of family members during
the Armenian genocide, was a physicist who worked on the Manhattan
Project, the massive research and development program that created
the first atomic bomb duringWorld War II.
Quite serious about his ethnic heritage, he has traveled to Armenia
numerous times to perform. As a Fulbright Senior Scholar in 2002,
he taught at Yerevan State Conservatory, located in downtown Yerevan,
the capital of Armenia. In addition, he has had Fulbright residencies
in Finland, Sweden, Switzerland and Greece, taught extensively at
the college level and written authoritative instructional texts.
Since breaking into the jazz world's major leagues in 1975 with Mongo
Santamaria's Afro-Cuban Jazz Octet, the versatile pianist has served
significant stints with such jazz greats as Sonny Rollins, Chet Baker,
Billy Harper and Paquito D'Rivera. His collaborations with other
luminaries over the years have included the late Thomas Chapin, the
noted creative music saxophonist/composer who grew up in Manchester.
At age 12 in his first step into jazz, Donelian played in a Dixieland
band directed by the well-known guitarist Arthur Ryerson, Sr. A big
band veteran and a consummate studio musician, Ryerson recorded with
Frank Sinatra and Charlie Parker. Ryerson's daughter, Ali, who is
today a prominent flutist and recording artist from Connecticut,
played in the band along with her brothers.
For all his academic training, extensive experience as an educator
with four decades in the business as a globe-trotting performer,
the 60-year-old still stresses the basics, including the wise use
of space, the primacy of melody and the abhorrence of clutter purely
for clutter's sake ~W "telling a story" is what it's really all about.
"I like stating an idea and leaving space for listeners to absorb it.
When there's too much happening, there's not much listening going on.
I'm after a deep melodicism," he says of his approach to whatever
he plays or writes. Old verities, like closely listening to your
bandmates and interacting to what they say, are also prime tenets of
his working philosophy.
http://www.courant.com/entertainment/music/concerts/hc-riffs-jazz-events-0922-20110922,0,479222.story
By Owen Mcnally, Special To The Courant
Hartford Courant
Sept 22 2011
CT
Although he has a blue-chip resume, a distinctive personal sound as a
pianist and composer and has just released his ninth envelope-pushing
album on Sunnyside Records, Armen Donelian is hardly a household
name, except perhaps in the hippest of homes where adventurous,
often lyrical cutting-edge music is revered.
Donelian, leads his bold, cohesive quintet Friday, Sept. 23 at 8:30
and 10 p.m. at New Haven's Firehouse 12.
Celebrating the release of his CD, "Leapfrog," the bandleader is
joined at Firehouse 12 by his four colleagues on his new disc: Dutch
saxophonist Marc Mommaas, guitarist Mike Moreno, bassist Dean Johnson
and drummer Tyshawn Sorey, an inventive percussionist who combines
muscularity with musicianly smarts.
Look for a repertoire rooted in the material on "Leapfrog," which
features eight Donelian compositions. Released this month, the album
was recorded, mixed and mastered last year at Firehouse 12 by the
cutting-edge music center's owner and chief engineer Nick Lloyd.
Donelian, who studied with the harmonically advanced, probing pianist
Richie Beirach, is an expressionist composer who ranges easily in
mood from the dark and forebodingly tumultuous to the mysterious
and dreamy. "Rage," the CD opener, is drenched in brooding, almost
obsessively compulsive thematic repetition, generating a dizzying
mood accentuated by the empathetic unison guitar/piano passages
spun by Moreno and Donelian. But the very next track, "The Poet," in
dramatic contrast, glides mysteriously above it all, a reassuringly
serene sotto voce response to the tempestuous atmospherics of "Rage."
"The inspiration for this music came from my reflections on where the
world is going these days," Donelian explains of the CD's shifting
moods, including the joyful, leapfrogging, energy of the CD's grand
finale, "Inner Sanctum."
Even before he stepped out into the jazz world, Donelian, as a
musically gifted child of Armenian parents, was immersed in his home
in Armonk, NY, with the sounds of Armenian, Turkish, Greek and Middle
Eastern music both at festive, music-filled family gatherings and
through his father's record collection. His father, who was born in
the old Ottoman Empire and had lost dozens of family members during
the Armenian genocide, was a physicist who worked on the Manhattan
Project, the massive research and development program that created
the first atomic bomb duringWorld War II.
Quite serious about his ethnic heritage, he has traveled to Armenia
numerous times to perform. As a Fulbright Senior Scholar in 2002,
he taught at Yerevan State Conservatory, located in downtown Yerevan,
the capital of Armenia. In addition, he has had Fulbright residencies
in Finland, Sweden, Switzerland and Greece, taught extensively at
the college level and written authoritative instructional texts.
Since breaking into the jazz world's major leagues in 1975 with Mongo
Santamaria's Afro-Cuban Jazz Octet, the versatile pianist has served
significant stints with such jazz greats as Sonny Rollins, Chet Baker,
Billy Harper and Paquito D'Rivera. His collaborations with other
luminaries over the years have included the late Thomas Chapin, the
noted creative music saxophonist/composer who grew up in Manchester.
At age 12 in his first step into jazz, Donelian played in a Dixieland
band directed by the well-known guitarist Arthur Ryerson, Sr. A big
band veteran and a consummate studio musician, Ryerson recorded with
Frank Sinatra and Charlie Parker. Ryerson's daughter, Ali, who is
today a prominent flutist and recording artist from Connecticut,
played in the band along with her brothers.
For all his academic training, extensive experience as an educator
with four decades in the business as a globe-trotting performer,
the 60-year-old still stresses the basics, including the wise use
of space, the primacy of melody and the abhorrence of clutter purely
for clutter's sake ~W "telling a story" is what it's really all about.
"I like stating an idea and leaving space for listeners to absorb it.
When there's too much happening, there's not much listening going on.
I'm after a deep melodicism," he says of his approach to whatever
he plays or writes. Old verities, like closely listening to your
bandmates and interacting to what they say, are also prime tenets of
his working philosophy.
http://www.courant.com/entertainment/music/concerts/hc-riffs-jazz-events-0922-20110922,0,479222.story