Let the Trumpets Sound!

YEREVAN, March 2016 — “The world is changing, and so are human values. Only music remains a constant spiritual island.” These wise words are those of Diana Hovhannisyan, director of the Anahit Tsitsikian Music School, in Yerevan. In a message to readers of the school’s home page, she points to the responsibility of parents and teachers in guaranteeing that the younger generation preserve “timeless human values,” and emphasizes the crucial role that musical education plays in this process. Music shapes the cognitive powers of a child, as well as its moral attitudes. Instead of wasting time and energy on senseless TV programs or video games, a child who learns to play a musical instrument develops intellectual rigor, learns to define goals and acquire the power of concentration to achieve them. The aim of her school, she writes, is “to foster the young generation’s spiritual development” through musical education. Whether or not a child may become a professional musician in the future, he or she “will inevitably become part of the world of music, keen to behold everything that is beautiful, devoted to things that are harmonious, kind, and timeless. He/she will learn to think, feel and live touched by the truly exquisite magic of Music.” Founded in 1987, the music school, N. 21, was named after the well-known violinist, Anahit Tsitsikian in 2007. Among its graduates are prize-winning students, many of whom have continued their studies in Armenia and abroad. In 2014, the U.S. Embassy’s organization Helping Hands and the Fuller Center for Housing Armenia renovated the recital hall, where students have the opportunity to perform for family and friends, gaining valuable experience.
Although the school had pianos and string instruments, wind instruments were lacking and most students from the local community who attend this school are not able to purchase their own. In response, AYO! (https://weareayo.org/) launched a crowd fundraising drive in late 2014. As AYO! wrote in its project presentation, “The school now has a beautiful performance space” and “tremendously dedicated students and staff. What could be missing? Instruments!”
The Fund for Armenian Relief (http://farusa.org) backed the effort and invited the Mirak-Weissbach Foundation, among others, to join. The funds needed for the instruments came together, and in early March it was announced that the school had received a shipment of new wind instruments, including trumpets, flutes, clarinets and saxophones. The only other item missing was furniture: to allow parents and friends to enjoy the concerts in the renovated recital hall, funds were needed to buy 120 chairs. If all goes according to plan, a concert will take place during the commemoration events around April 24th this year. (If it is “standing room only,” then not for lack of chairs….).

New Instruments for Anahit Tsitsikian Music School

In March 2016 a shipment of eight shiny new wind instruments arrived at the Anahit Tsitsikian music school in Yerevan. The flutes, clarinets, trumpets and saxophones – two each – were purchased with contributions made to a crowd-fundraising drive launched by AYO! The Mirak-Weissbach Foundation, informed of the campaign by the Fund for Armenian Relief (http://farusa.org), contributed $1,000.00 to the effort.

The Anahit Tsitsikian school was founded in 1987, and was named after the famous violinist, in 2007. Located in Yerevan, it is one of the few such schools serving students from the local community. Over the past decades, it has gained a reputation for quality, as many of its students have won awards, and gone on to advanced study in Armenia and abroad. In 2014, the U.S. Embassy’s organization Helping Hands and the Fuller Center for Housing Armenia undertook a major project to renovate the recital hall, constructing a completely new floor for the room used for concerts. Although the school had pianos and string instruments, wind instruments were lacking and most students from the local community who attend this school are not able to purchase their own. At the end of 2014 AYO! (https://weareayo.org) announced a campaign to raise funds to buy the instruments. Commenting on the just-completed recital hall renovation, AYO! wrote, “The school now has a beautiful performance space” and “tremendously dedicated students and staff. What could be missing? Instruments!”

With a stroke of good luck, the organizers learned of a huge sale of wind instruments on the internet, and managed to purchase the instruments at great savings. To complete the furnishing of the recital hall, the campaign collected more funds, earmarked for the purchase of 120 chairs, for family and friends who will attend the concerts of the school’s students.

Students at the Anahit Tsitsikian music school lost no time in trying out the new wind instruments that arrived in March 2016.

ANAHIT TSITSIKIAN
Anahit Tsitsikian (1926–1999) was born in Leningrad (now St. Petersburg), Russia. After studying under Professor Karp Dombayev at the Yerevan State Conservatory (1946–1950), she won the Stalin Scholarship and completed her graduate course at the Moscow State Conservatory in 1954. While still a child, she started to perform both as a soloist and with symphonic orchestras. Beginning in 1961 she was the principal soloist at the Armenian Philharmonic Hall. She appeared in concerts throughout the Republics of the former Soviet Union and in 27 countries around the world, and produced four vinyl discs under the Melodiya label.

Her repertoire featured the music of modern Armenian composers, whose works she often co-authored, edited and premiered. In 1950 she began teaching at the Yerevan State Conservatory where she introduced three new courses: “The History and Theory of Bowed Instruments”, “History of Armenian Performing Arts”, and a course in Music teaching practice. While still a student of the Conservatory, she began her research, and focused on bowing art
history and Musical Archaeology, of which she was the founder in Armenia. A participant in international scientific conferences, her studies have been published in Armenia and abroad. Her artistic career included performances in over a thousand recitals, recordings of sixty pieces of archived music, and texts of more than 300 articles and scripts for both radio and television. She was a member of many local and international organizations, among them, the Composer’s Union of Armenia, the Union of Soviet Composers, the Armenian Theater Union, the Journalists Union, the Women’s Committee of the USSR, AOKS (cultural liaison committee of Armenia with foreign countries), the “History of World Culture” Committee in the Academy of Sciences of the Soviet Union, The World Scientific Association of Historical Archaeology, etc. Anahit Tsitsikian passed away on May 2, 1999 and in that year the “Anahit Cultural Foundation” was established to continue her work and fulfill her dreams. The mission of the foundation is to facilitate the promotion of Armenian music by supporting musicians in their professional education and work, setting up and implementing cultural programs and events, and stimulating the integration of Armenian music within international music.
(Adapted from http://anahitmusicschool.com/?page_id=213)

Gegashen Music School

Mariam Kazaryan with new piano.

A Piano for the Music School in Gegashen

Yerevan, April 26, 2016 – Gegashen is a small village about 40 kilometers from Yerevan. But, like many Armenian villages, it has its own music school, where children and youth can take music lessons, for a small monthly fee. Although the 4 Euro fee is considerable for many low-income families, the school is popular and is becoming an important local institution. The principal of the school, Mariam Kazaryan, had heard about the Mirak-Weissbach Foundation and its support for music education in Armenia, and had travelled to Yerevan to meet the Weissbachs. Her main request was a contribution for a piano for the recital hall in the school. As an accomplished pianist, she had looked for and found a good, second-hand instrument for a reasonable price. She was happy to learn that the Mirak-Weissbach Foundation could help out, and arrangements were made for the purchase. In May the donation arrived, and soon after the piano was delivered to the school.

Gyumri Octet School Launches Musical Renaissance

GYUMRI, September 30, 2013  — Armenians in Gyumri celebrated the 22nd anniversary of independence appropriately with music. On September 20, a day before the official festivities took place in Yerevan and other cities, leading national figures joined by international guests officiated over the opening of the brand new Octet music school, which had been destroyed in the 1988 earthquake. All those who participated in the years-long effort to establish a new school were on hand: the musicians from England and Australia, Ian Gillan and John Dee of Deep Purple, who had originally launched the idea after having visited the devastated area and, through benefit concerts and commemorative CD’s, raised the initial funds for the project; Edward and Janet Mardigian, whose Mardigian Foundation tripled the amount raised by the Rock Aid Armenia campaign; Armenian President Serge Sargisian, whose government donated further funds for construction; the Governor of Shirak region Felix Tsolakyan and Gyumri Mayor Samvel Balasanyan; officials of the Fund for Armenian Relief (FAR), both from the leadership in New York and the Yerevan office; church leaders, including Archbishop Khajag Barsamian from New York; last but not least, Haik Hovivyan, president of the Kanaka construction company which built the school in record time, and Harutyun Asatryan, director of the school, his teaching staff and — most importantly — his students.
As soon as the president had arrived and local and international guests gathered in front of the beautiful stone edifice, festively decorated with red and white balloons, the Gyumri local brass band launched a musical salute. Under the shrouds of dozens of cameras, manned by journalists from local, national and international networks and newspapers, Archbishop Khajag Barsamian, Primate, Diocese of the Armenian Church of America (Eastern), offered blessings in a short religious service, after which Ian Gillan ceremoniously cut the red ribbon. After strolling through the classrooms, offices and recital hall, the entourage gathered in the new amphitheater built to host open-air concerts.
The representatives who spoke said everything one would expect on such an occasion: some recalled the tragedy that hit Gyumri and Spitak, others chronicled the process leading to the reconstruction effort, and all expressed their heartfelt thanks to those many who had made it happen. But there was nothing perfunctory or formal in their remarks. The ceremony was deeply moving. Gillan, who recounted his experience in Spitak in 1990, cited one image, a human image, of the suffering: it was an old woman he encountered, who had a photograph of her extended family, her siblings, her children and her grandchildren, along with cousins and nephews and nieces. There were 28 people in all — all of them, he reported, had perished in the quake.
“How do you possibly deal with something like that?” he remembered asking himself. The devastation had silenced the entire community as he learned in discussion with the mayor. There had been “no music for over a year, no music in the churches or schools, no music on the radio.” It seemed, he said, “as if even the birds had stopped singing.”
Gillan told the mayor, when they were ready for music again, maybe he and his group could do something. This they did, first with benefit concerts, then with the idea to build a new music school. Gillan said, “The dream was to get music started again” and that the effort was symbolic: “it is truly a renaissance.”
In 2009, as Barsamian summarized in his remarks, the project took on concrete form. Together with FAR and the Mardigians, they raised more funds and mapped out plans for construction. The government joined the effort with financing and political support. A large donation of new musical instruments had arrived from Canada, from Tim Irving of the Who Cares group, also associated with Gillan et al. Archbishop Barsamian saw “God’s presence” in the effort, which “inspires human compassion, creativity and the love of beauty.” It was these musicians, “angels of mercy” who, moved by the music of the school, which for years had been the training ground for children of special talent, came to its rescue.
In recognition of the special role played by Gillan in spearheading the drive, Asatryan presented him a portrait which Gyumri artist Samuel Lajikian had made of the musician. (The following day, Lajikian, a friend of the Octet school, was honored in Yerevan, when the president gave him the honorary artist of Armenia award.)
Most appropriately, what followed the speeches was a concert, performed by the students. From ensemble music, with orchestra and traditional Armenian instruments (duduks, kanouns and drums), to soloists, both instrumental and vocal, the students gave the guests a sample of their achievements they played and sang with precision, passion and joy.
Local and national media covered the event in their evening news broadcasts. The local population in Gyumri took special delight in the ceremony. Although, due to the presence of the president, security was extremely tight, crowds of residents from the immediate neighborhood thronged to the site, following events from the other side of the fences around the school.
As a “coda” to the official opening, on September 23 the Blüthner Grand Piano donated by the Mirak-Weissbach Foundation arrived in Gyumri. Transported overland from Leipzig, Germany, it had made it to Yerevan on September 19, but had to go through customs procedures before being released to the final recipient. The timing turned out to be most propitious, as the public ceremony — and associated stress — had passed and the personnel at the school could arrange the rather demanding operation to transfer the instrument from its truck to the recital hall with care. It was Haik Hovivyan, the engineer who had overseen the construction, along with his crew of workers, who completed the delicate task. With the aid of a crane, a dozen workmen eased the piano out of the truck, onto the ground, and thence into its final resting place.
That day, September 23, was also the first day of school for the students, and we had the opportunity to sit in on several classes and get a first-hand sense of how they learn music. In the several rooms built for individual lessons, students received personalized instruction, whether in singing or at the piano, with violin or flute or kanoun. The school offers a fiveyear program, after which many students go on to conservatory or other forms of higher education. They receive a solid foundation in solfège, and are encouraged to play by heart as soon as they have mastered a piece. There are about 42 teachers, most of them professional musicians, who train the 240 or so students who attend classes two to three times per week in the afternoons, after their regular school day.
Needless to say, this year, the first day of school was a day everyone will remember. After 25 years of study in makeshift quarters, primitive metal-and-wooden shelters (“domiks”) which were supposed to be “temporary,” teachers and students can now benefit from modern, clean, roomy quarters in a beautiful building, and concentrate their efforts and excitement on great music. All expressed their gratitude for the gifts they had received from abroad — funds for a magnificent new school and lots of new instruments. They promised that on our next visit, they would treat us to a concert of classical European and Armenian music on their new instruments, including the piano from Germany.

Primate Khajag Barsamian at the opening

Young students in Gyumri performed for the guests.

A Grand Piano, yes even a Blüthner Grand, for the New Music School in Gyumri