YEREVAN (A.W.)–As part of the Yerevan Perspectives 11th International Music Festival, Joe Cocker, a Grammy, Golden Globe, and Academy Award-winning blues/rock performer, held a concert at the Karen Demirchyan Sport and Concert Complex in Yerevan on Oct. 26.
Cocker played some of his newly released Hard Knocks tracks, as well as many of his biggest hits, including “Unchain my Heart,” “Feelin’ Alright,” and “With a Little Help from my Friends.”
Renowned Spanish tenor and conductor Placido Domingo is also scheduled to perform as part of the same festival on Nov. 15. Domingo’s performance will have two parts, the first classical and the second Napolitan. Sources say he will be accompanied by the State Philharmonic Orchestra of Armenia, conducted by Israel Gursky. Grammy award-winning soprano Maria Martinez will also take the stage alongside Domingo.
One of “The Three Tenors,” Domingo also conducts operas and serves as the general director of the Washington National Opera and Los Angeles Opera.
Domingo has won nine Grammy Awards and three Latin Grammy Awards. He has received many other awards and honorary doctorates, including an Honorary Knighthood from Queen Elizabeth II, the United States Presidential Medal of Freedom, and France’s Ordre National de la Legion d’Honneur.
The festival will feature still another music star: Goran Bregovic, along with his Wedding and Funeral Orchestra, are scheduled to perform on Dec. 3. Born to a Serbian mother and Croatian father, Bregovic describes himself as a “contemporary” composer. Like Domingo, he has been bestowed with numerous awards and honorary doctorates. He has composed music for concerts, theater productions, and a number of films, repeatedly teaming up with filmmaker Emir Kusturica to create music for “Times of the Gypsies,” “Arizona Dream,” and “Underground.”
“What does his orchestra for Weddings and Funerals composed of a gypsy brass band, traditional Bulgarian polyphonies, an electric guitar, traditional percussion, strings and Orthodox Church male singers, read on Bregovic’s score sheets? Echoes from Jewish and Gypsy weddings, chants from Orthodox and Catholic Church, Muslim invocations. His music comes from that terrible frontier where for centuries Catholics, Orthodox Christians and Muslims made war and lived together. Music that our soul recognizes instinctively and the body greets with an irresistible urge to dance,” states Bregovic’s biography, posted on his website.
The concerts will take place at the Karen Demirchyan Sport and Concert Complex. The Joe Cocker concert was sponsored by Ameria Bank on the occasion of its 100th anniversary.
The festival is a yearly one—the first took place in 2000—and features world known soloists, conductors, composers, and orchestras covering various genres of music, including classical, contemporary, and jazz.
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