Folk songs ‘like a balm’ to Armenian people

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This article was published 31/03/2009 (6381 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

She’s a Canadian opera superstar who dances to her own drummer, taking time for projects outside her usual — pardon the pun — arias.

Isabel Bayrakdarian performed the ethereal song Evenstar on the movie soundtrack of The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers.

She loaned her stunning soprano to the band Delirium on its Grammy-nominated dance remix, Angelicus.

But the project closest to Bayrakdarian’s heart recently is a tribute to her Armenian heritage.

The four-time Juno Award winner makes her long-awaited Winnipeg debut tonight with the Manitoba Chamber Orchestra in a program of Armenian compositions under guest conductor Alain Trudel. Tickets are still available.

The 34-year-old soprano says she doesn’t feel like a newcomer here because the MCO accompanied her on a six-city tour last October, culminating in a concert at New York’s legendary Carnegie Hall.

"Having done a tour, you become friends with most of the orchestra members," she says in lightly accented English.

The ravishing Bayrakdarian was born in Lebanon to Armenian parents. The family immigrated to Toronto when she was in her teens. Her husband, pianist Serouj Kradjian, is also Armenian-Canadian. They have a one-year-old son and live in Toronto.

Although she grew up singing in church, Bayrakdarian earned a degree in biomedical engineering and didn’t seriously consider a musical career until she started winning voice competitions. She vaulted to fame after winning Placido Domingo’s Operalia contest nine years ago. She has performed in many of the world’s top opera houses.

The singer had grandparents on both sides who survived the Armenian genocide, in which more than one million Armenians were exterminated during and just after the First World War.

Last fall, she released a CD devoted to Gomidas Vartabed (1869-1935), a revered composer and ethnologist who is credited with saving Armenian folk music from oblivion. "Without him, there would be no Armenian music today," says Bayrakdarian.

The often-haunting folk songs that Gomidas preserved and interpreted are touchstones for Armenians worldwide. During the tour with the MCO, the soloist would look into the audience and see Armenians mouthing the words to Gomidas’s songs along with her.

"It was tremendously moving for them, for our music to be sung on stages and given the recognition it deserves….

"The perpetrator (of the genocide), Turkey, still hasn’t accepted responsibility and still denies it. For us, closure hasn’t happened yet. So for the Armenian audience… it’s like a balm, to hear these songs — an affirmation that we have survived."

In 2004, Bayrakdarian made her first pilgrimage to Armenia, captured in a moving CBC-TV documentary called A Long Journey Home.

The emotional peak of the trip, she remembers, came when she stood inside an ancient cathedral. The connection to her ancestral people struck her so deeply that she and Kradjian returned there for their wedding.

"That was the moment," she says, "when I felt I belonged."

alison.mayes@freepress.mb.ca

 

CONCERT PREVIEW

Isabel Bayrakdarian with the Manitoba Chamber Orchestra

Tonight at 7:30 p.m.

Westminster United Church

Tickets $26.50

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