Global Arts Live presents Tigran Hamasyan at Berklee

Tigran Hamasyan (Photo courtesy of the artist)

BOSTON—Tigran Hamasyan will perform on Friday, March 15, 2024 at 8 p.m. at Berklee Performance Center, 136 Massachusetts Ave., Boston, presented by Global Arts Live. Tickets are $30–$58, reserved seating. For tickets and information call Global Arts Live at (617) 876-4275 or buy online at globalartslive.org.

Hamasyan fuses potent jazz improvisation with the rich folkloric music of his native Armenia. A piano virtuoso with groove power, he’s one of the most remarkable and distinctive jazz-meets-rock pianists of his generation. “With startling combinations of jazz, minimalist, electronic, folk and songwriterly elements, Hamasyan and his collaborators travel musical expanses marked with heavy grooves, ethereal voices, pristine piano playing and ancient melodies” (NPR Music). He’ll be accompanied by Evan Marien on bass and Arthur Hnatek on drums.

Born in Gyumri, Armenia in 1987, Hamasyan grew up in a household that was full of music – his father more of a rock fan while his uncle was a huge jazz buff. When he was just a toddler, Hamasyan gravitated to tape players and the piano instead of regular childhood toys, and by the time he was three, he was working his way through figuring out songs on piano by the Beatles, Louis Armstrong, Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple, Black Sabbath and Queen. His jazz tastes early on were informed by Miles Davis’ fusion period, and around the age of 10, when his family moved to Yerevan, he came to discover the classic jazz songbook under the aegis of his teacher Vahag Hayrapetyan, who had studied with Barry Harris.

Hamasyan started performing in festivals and competitions when he was 11, winning the Montreux Jazz Festival’s piano competition in 2003. He released his debut album, World Passion, in 2005 at the age of 17. The following year, he won the prestigious Thelonious Monk International Jazz Piano Competition. He’s also won a Victoires de la Musique (the equivalent of a Grammy Award in France), the Echo Jazz Award for International Piano Instrumentalist of the Year and the Deutscher Jazzpreis international category in Piano/Keyboards. He’s built a dedicated international following and has received praise from Chick Corea, Herbie Hancock and Brad Mehldau.

The Call Within, released in 2020, is an epic journey into the invisible inner world of the artist who, despite having a physical body, is living in a dreamlike inner world as realistic as the physical one, where the moment of unconscious creation is the way to feel conscious.

Hamasyan explains, “Unutterable seconds of longing, subliminal realization, and mostly joy fill the body as a work of art, a poem or a melody is being born into this world for no apparent reason, but only for humanity to discover what is invisible: the divine mystery.” The album also explores the artist’s inspiration for maps from different time periods in history. It explores poetry, Christian and pre-Christian Armenian folk stories and legends, as well as astrology, geometry, ancient Armenian design, rock carvings and cinematography. Consisting of 10 original compositions featuring Evan Marien on electric bass and Arthur Hnatek on drums, The Call Within is one of Hamasyan’s most energetic and high-intensity albums. It was included on Album of the Year lists by BBC Music Magazine and Jazzwise, which called it “an exceptional recording for exceptional times.”

Hamasyan released StandArt, his first album of American standards, in 2022. Produced by the pianist/composer, the album includes songs from the 1920s through the 1950s by Richard Rodgers, Charlie Parker, Jerome Kern and others, plus a piece Hamasyan improvised with his bandmates – bassist Matt Brewer and drummer Justin Brown – and trumpeter Ambrose Akinmusire. Other special guests include saxophonists Joshua Redman and Mark Turner.

“With this record, I really wanted to apply different techniques and ideas I’ve developed over the years to a repertoire that I finally had an opportunity to re-visit, and to send a message that I really appreciate this music and am thankful for it,” Hamasyan says. “I love these compositions and melodies so much that, to me, it’s like Armenian folk music. As an immigrant, an Armenian-American, I relate to these composers and musicians from various backgrounds who have that kind of history, a dark history, but managed to succeed in an embodiment of freedom. In that way, I feel like I want to be part of this, to find something in the tradition of where I came from.”