Aram Demirjian Conducts Famed Cellist Yo-Yo Ma and Silk Road Ensemble

By Armand Andreassian

Aram Demirjian has had a hectic schedule since graduating from Harvard in 2008 and leaving his post as director of the Bach Society Orchestra of his alma mater. His attention has been focused on selecting an institution to further his studies and career as a conductor. To that end, he has travelled extensively throughout the United States auditioning at many prestigious music schools and conservatories. A unique opportunity brought Demirjian back to his campus in Cambridge to conduct the celebrated world-famous cellist Yo-Yo Ma and members of his “Silk Road Ensemble.” Jack Megan, director of the Office for the Arts, contacted Demirjian a short time prior to the concert to conduct the ensemble, as the professional conductor Ma had requested was unavailable to assume the role.

An evening program entitled “Witness,” organized by the Humanities Center and Offices of the President and Provost, represented the contribution of the arts and humanities in celebration of the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (the groundbreaking United Nations document, signed in 1948, is being commemorated in a series of events during Harvard’s 2008-09 academic year).The event, which was held at the Memorial Church, was sold out within a couple of hours after the box office had made the tickets available.

“Witness” displayed the creativity of music, dance, and literature for nearly three hours to a responsive full house.

Homi Bhabha, director of the Humanities Center, said, “The arts and humanities are instruments of aspiration and empathy as well as vivid documents of injustice and longing. They provide the world an ethic of public virtue.”

Before the readings of brief passages in literature by 14 Harvard scholars, the audience rose to its feet and performed a modern dance, in place, with outstretched arms led by Damian Woetzel, a one-time principal dancer of the New York City Ballet. One of the readers, Toni Morrison, the 1993 Nobel Prize winner in literature, said of our new modern world that the arts “will have an impact on ethic and human rights..

“Night Music: Voice in the Leaves,” written by Uzbekistani composer Dimitri Yanov-Yanovsky, was the longest of the musical pieces performed that evening by Ma and his ensemble with Demirjian conducting.

When asked for a comment regarding the evening’s program, Demirjian said, “It’s always a fabulous experience to work with any professional musician, particularly one of Yo-Yo Ma’s calibre, but to work specifically with Mr. Ma who is not only the greatest cellist in the world but also one of the most profoundly humble people in music and all of the arts was incomparable. Yo-Yo Ma is a superb performer but an even greater communicator. Anybody who interacts with him inevitably learns something. Working with him, for me, is not only a lesson in music and creativity but also a discovery of the depths to which an artist, simply by the example he sets, can move and inspire those around him.”