Experience the world premiere of ANDOUNI (Homeless), a Project 19 commission by Mary Kouyoumdjian, in collaboration with photojournalist Scout Tufankjian. ANDOUNI will premiere as part of the “Sound On: Music of Displacement and Connection” program at New York City’s Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts on Friday, May 10, 2024 at 8 p.m. ET.
Through music and photography, Kouyoumdjian and Tufankjian examine the horror and tragedy of the recent genocide and exodus of Armenians from Artsakh/Nagorno-Karabakh.
Kwamé Ryan will conduct Kouyoumdjian’s meditation on the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict. Also on the program are Hannah Kendall’s shouting forever into the receiver, inspired by the writings of Ocean Vuong, Ligetidyll by Péter Eötvös and Mask by Michel van der Aa.
Kouyoumdjian is a composer and documentarian with projects ranging from concert works to multimedia collaborations and film scores. As a first generation Armenian-American from a family directly affected by the Lebanese Civil War and Armenian Genocide, she uses a sonic palette that draws on her heritage, interest in music as documentary and background in experimental composition to progressively blend the old with the new. A strong believer in freedom of speech and the arts as an amplifier of expression, her compositional work often integrates recorded testimonies with resilient individuals and field recordings of place to invite empathy by humanizing complex experiences around social and political conflict.
Tufankjian is an Armenian-American photographer based in New York City, best known for her work documenting both of Barack Obama’s presidential campaigns—including her 2008 NYT and LA Times bestselling book Yes We Can: Barack Obama’s History-Making Presidential Campaign. Her second book, There is Only the Earth, was the culmination of six years documenting Armenian communities in over 20 different countries. More recently, she has served as a temporary acting director of Committee to Protect Journalists’s Emergency Response Team and the Senior Afghanistan Consultant for Too Young to Wed.
Born in Canada and raised on the Caribbean island of Trinidad, Ryan discovered his passion for conducting at the age of nine. He read musicology at Cambridge University and studied conducting under the guidance of renowned composer and conductor Peter Eötvös. Ryan held the position of general music director of Freiburg Opera, 1999-2003, and served as musical and artistic director of the National Orchestra of Bordeaux Aquitaine, 2007-13.
In 2020, the New York Philharmonic introduced Project 19—a multi-season initiative to commission and premiere 19 new works by 19 women composers—the largest women-only commissioning initiative in history. Project 19 was born of the conviction that an orchestra can participate in conversations about social imperatives and even change the status quo. Through Project 19, the Philharmonic can mark a “tectonic shift in American culture,” said Deborah Borda—the NY Phil’s President and CEO when the project was announced—by giving women composers a platform and catalyzing representation in classical music and beyond.
Tickets are available to purchase here.
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