Tigran Hamasyan
For Gyumri

The world of music, inextricably linked with pop culture (of which it constitutes a part), can periodically present some true anomalies. Phenomenological manifestations that step out of every consolidated and habitual pattern and that for some reason, be it opportunistic or due to their own (possible) talent, become a unique case or perhaps set a trend and dictate fashion. In this case, we are in the presence of a young and incredibly talented musician who, although having nothing to do with pop music, can be considered a kind of "phenomenon" particularly noted even by an audience that is generally disinterested in jazz music. I am talking about the jazz pianist Tigran Hamasyan. Born in 1987, Tigran was born in Gyumri, Armenia, but has lived in Los Angeles since he was 16. He began playing the piano at the age of 3. In 2003, he won the first of his many prestigious awards as a revelation at the Montreux Festival. In 2006, at just eighteen years old, he recorded his first solo album, then it was the turn of his first album with his historic group (the Aratta Rebirth...). "For Gyumri" is the third album released by the now 25-year-old pianist on Nonesuch Records: a work clearly inspired by his native places but also presented by Tigran as "musical observations on the world we live in now and the weight of the history we carry with us."

The album constitutes the ideal follow-up to "An Ancient Observer" (2017) and contains five solo piano compositions written by Tigran in that distinctive style considered "mixed" because it combines jazz music with traditional Armenian music: an aspect that has been central to this artist's vision since he was a boy. But one must be careful not to mistake this album for something too far from the more classic patterns of the genre: Tigran is an artist of great inventiveness who moves in an oscillating manner within the patterns of a thoroughly vast genre like jazz, literally molding his music as if it were clay. Compared to early Brad Mehldau, his compositions are performed with a certain elasticity and virtuosity that he seems almost to hold in check with difficulty at certain points.

Considered a young visionary and in some ways an idealistic artist, whether Tigran Hamasyan is a musical or media phenomenon, I do not know. However, this album is a real challenge that this young pianist launches in a truly neo-classical context (instead of one derived from American jazz) and whose tones are indeed charged with that already mentioned human and more visceral pathos, a weight that despite his youth, Tigran demonstrates he can bear on his already experienced shoulders.