PROFILE 5

days people are too busy on their phones and computers to look at the mountain, to look around them. I’m really interested in archeolo- gy and ancient ornaments” — don’t ask him why, he offers with a smile — “and there was this moment when I came across a 4000-year- old ceramic bowl from the Ararat Valley with impressions of the birds, trees and flowers the potter saw as he made it. I realised there is an art to observing.” While the album’s title track is all spacey vo- cals and ancient-to-future grooves, the song Egyptian Poet, with its changing vocal registers and swerving musical tempos, was inspired by a 4000-year-old book of poetry from Egypt. “I was fascinated by this book because it related so much to what is going on in the world now; back then it was all about love and power and hurt feelings too.” Crafted on a raw, ethereal sound- scape, Leninagone is a multi-layered, Russian- doll of a track that takes its melodic cue from late-19th-century Armenian piano music as it tells of the rise and fall of the Soviet Union, a historical event that had a profound impact on , a former component of the USSR. Hamasyan performing with the Ambitious, much? Another smile. “This State Chamber Choir; music has a hint of the Russian Revolution Herbie Hancock, below

[which kickstarted the Soviet Union], and from ZIELINSKI/REDFERNS T. AMY the way it’s arranged it is very much about Ar- menian folk influences as well as Caucasian me- Miles Davis, Wayne Shorter and Herbie Han- would say it is all about balancing body, mind lodies and Soviet classical music; creating a cock, him tapping the dashboard, me with my and spirit,” he adds, name-checking the contro- hybrid was part of Soviet ideology. Finally eyes on the sky.” versial 20th-century Russian mystic whose you hear the collapse of the Soviet Union [in Enamoured of Hancock and the Headhunt- hauntingly beautiful track The Spinners features 1991], which was apocalyptic times for most ers’ funk-jazz classic Chameleon, he transcribed on Hamasyan’s 2011 album, The Fable. countries around there.” A pause. “But es- the entire song, from the solos to every single Hamasyan was 11 when his uncle took him to pecially Armenia.” guitar part, while still a child. He got into heavy a music teacher who had studied in New York Hamasyan was 18 months old when, in De- metal; he still loves Swedish icons Meshuggah under Bob Harris, one of the great bebop pian- cember 1988, a devastating earthquake hit (“Their rhythms are insane”) as much as he ists of the 50s and 60s. For a year he immersed northern Armenia, killing 25,000 people and does Beethoven and Bud Powell. Enrolled at himself in improvising with form, laying the leaving hundreds of thousands homeless. The classical music school, he struggled through for- foundations for a glittering career that has in- baby Tigran was with his parents, a jeweller and mal lessons while guest singing in a big band — cluded recordings with the Yerevan State a clothing designer, in , 120km from a huge-voiced nine-year-old doing jazz stan- Chamber Choir (2015’s , or Light of Yerevan and one of the oldest cities in the dards, mainly, along with the Beatles’ Oh! Dar- Light, on the ECM label) and collaborations world, in an apartment building that cracked ling — and improvising on the keys. with the likes of Indian percussionist Trilok but mercifully didn’t collapse. The next year Improvisation, you sense, is Hamasyan’s oxy- Gurtu, Tunisian oud player , Armenia went to war with neighbouring Azer- gen. It’s what gives his work its force and depth dubstep collective LV and fellow American- baijan, resulting in a blockade. There were elec- and is where, he says, everything starts. Armenian from prog-metal outfit tricity blackouts and early morning queues for To watch him play — at Carnegie Hall in System of a Down. poor-quality bread. “My father ended up with a New York, say, or as the opening act of the Lon- His first big public outing, at 2000’s fledgling stomach ulcer,” he says. don Jazz Festival — is to watch a maestro Yerevan International Jazz Festival, drew a Tigran’s mother encouraged him to play the tapped into another dimension, directed by an standing ovation. After relocating to Los Ang- family piano since it was something he could do energy that feels almost otherworldly. Eyes TIGRAN, YOU ARE eles with his parents, who hoped to give their by candlelight. “They were terrible times,” he closed, hunched so low over the piano that his two children better artistic chances (“There are says. “I remember my [younger] sister crying nose almost touches the ivories, he seems to dis- MY TEACHER NOW! probably more Armenians there than in Arme- when the electricity came on, because it was so appear into music that swerves from delicate nia, though I’ve heard Australia comes close,” unusual. But we had some cool moments too.” impressions of Eastern orthodox hymns to HERBIE HANCOCK he quips), he went on to win a number of com- His earliest musical memory, captured on bursts of electronica and hip hop; from dreamy petitions including one at the 2003 Montreux home movie footage, is listening to Black Sab- meditations that see him vocalising in the style Jazz Festival and another at the Thelonious bath’s Paranoid and wigging out on a toy guitar, of Keith Jarrett or Glenn Gould to all-stops-out Monk Institute in Washington. He met musi- aged three. “My father loved all the classic En- jazz rock. cians such as saxophonist Ben Wendel and glish rock bands: Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin, “I’ve always improvised, even before I knew drummer and multi-instrumentalist Nate Deep Purple,” he says; we break off to nerd out what jazz was,” says Hamasyan, who uses Wood, a pivotal figure in the thriving Los Ang- on the fact that Smoke on the Water was written snatches of modal Armenian folk melodies eles spiritual jazz scene (which has largely about the Montreux side of Lake Geneva. “But where other jazzers might use bebop. “To me, moved to New York), who he continues to work it was his brother, my Uncle Armen, who really improvising is a special mindset; it is something with. Increasingly, reviews were peppered with got me into jazz. When I was about four he you either have or you don’t. When you go on the word “genius”. would come around and pretend that we were stage, for example, you have to be in a state of Hamasyan lived briefly in New York, then in going for a drive to shoot some helicopters; we’d not thinking too much. If you’re too tense or go zooming around rural Armenia listening to emotional it goes into your arms. Gurdjieff Continued on Page 6

theaustralian.com.au/review June 3-4, 2017 V1 - AUSE01Z01AR