Canadian Armenian pianist Eve Egoyan is presenting the premiere of her piece In Stone on March 12. The concert is part of her residency as the Artist in Residence at the Jackman Humanities Institute in partnership with the Faculty of Music of the University of Toronto.
In Stone is a work for augmented acoustic piano and reflects on the Armenian Genocide that took place between 1915 and 1923. The composition was created in response to the Jackman Humanities Institute’s annual theme of Dystopia and Trust.
Armenian Genocide
The Armenian Genocide is sometimes referred to as the first genocide of the 20th century. By the spring of 1915, about 1.5 million Armenians, Christian by faith, were living in the multiethnic Ottoman Empire. Poor to WWI, the Armenians had a somewhat protected space within Ottoman Society as a minority. However, after the Ottoman Empire went through a number of military defeats, and had lost territory, during the Balkan Wars of 1912 to 1913. The setbacks turned the tide of opinion against the Armenians, who the regime saw as having closer ties to Anatolia.
The Ottoman regime sent paramilitary forces to massacre Armenians during their invasions of Russian and Persian territory in 1914. This initiative escalated in 1915, when the Ottoman authors targeted Armenian intellectuals and community leaders, arresting them, and deporting them via torturous marches through the Syrian desert. It’s estimated that between 800,000 and 1.2 million Armenians were sent on these death marches, where they were deprived of food and water, robbed, raped, and often murdered along the way. In 1916, another wave of such deportations was initiated.
Whoever survived was sent to a concentration camp.
About 100,000 to 200,000 Armenian women and children were forcibly concerted to Islam and integrated into Muslim households. About 500,000 survivors were exiled.
The 2,000 year old Armenian civilization in eastern Anatolia was wiped out, and the atrocities continued until about 1923 during the Turkish War of Independence. The genocide has never been acknowledged by Turkey, which has resulted in the distorted history for Armenian survivors and their descendants which persists to this day.
Eve Egoyan performs her composition Ghosts Beneath My Fingertips in 2021:
Eve Egoyan: The Music
Egoyan writes,
“How can I as an artist express this un-speakable past in this equally distressing present moment?
My ancestors live deeply in my soul. “In Stone” is an attempt to sing their song amidst the plethora of human songs that need to be heard in our time. Nature herself is singing loudly to us through climate change.”
Her piece In Stone looks to posit nature as a witness to the atrocities committed by humankind.
She describes the composition,
“I share my Armenian story by bringing into this composition fragments from sacred ancient Armenian hymns, pastoral and folkloric songs, and folkloric instruments. The songs and hymns are fragmented to express a feeling of both presence and loss. The meandering feeling of the compositional form echoes the wandering tradition of troubadour story-telling.”
She includes excerpts from “Zarmanali e Indz” (“It is Wonderous to me”) by 8th-century Armenian hymnographer and poet Khosrovidukht, an early composer who also happens to be a woman. Also referenced is “Havun Havun” (“To the Bird”, which refers to the Holy Ghost), one of the oldest known Armenian sacred hymns, and “Arabkir Bar” (“Arabkir Dance”), a dance from the city of Arabkir where Eve’s paternal grandfather was born.
Physical remnants of Armenians society still exist on their ancestral territory, including hand carved stones, crosses, and the ruins of stone churches. Carved inscriptions preserve the Armenian language.
“Through carved inscriptions and images they literally hold the Armenian language and artistic imagination within them, carrying our words, our prayers, our essence, held “In stone” through time past to time present and into the future.”
The stone remnants are strewn across the land, just as, she points out, diasporic Armenians are today scattered across the earth. On those ancestral lands in Western Armenia, the remains of gardens and orchards planted by Armenians also remain.
“The title of my work, In Stone, refers to stones on ancient land holding resonances of the past, the past both human and non-human. I trust in nature as witness and guardian of the truth.”
Egoyan has conducted detailed research in Yerevan, Armenia, including recording folk musicians and their instruments, such as the hvi (high wooden flute) and Blul (shepherd’s flute), Kanun (large
plucked zither instrument), Qamancha (bowed string instrument), Duduk (double-reed woodwind instrument), Santur (hammered dulcimer), and Tar (lute) to recreate the various sounds of the natural world.
She also recorded native birdsongs in the Khosrov Forest State Nature Reserve.
The Augmented Acoustic Piano
Egoyan uses an optical sensor which tracks the movement of piano keys to reveal sounds that she has recorded. It also allows her to simultaneously use a software simulation of an acoustic piano.
The combination both augments and extends the soundscape of the piano, while maintaining the physical relationship between performer and instrument.
“I consider the instrument I perform on a self-portrait,” she writes.
The augmented piano contains both her past, in the form of recorded Armenian folk instruments, present, including recent field recordings, and the future, in the form of explorative AI.
Concert Details
The free concert takes place on March 12, from 12:10 p.m. to 1:00 p.m. at Walter Hall in the University of Toronto Faculty of Music (80 Queens Park).
If you can’t make it in person, there will be a livestream available [HERE].
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