PUT IN A WORD FOR AUTHOR SONG…

Panorama.am
13:55 30/03/06

The Republican Festival of author song “Golden Lyre 2006” is going
to be held from May to June of the current year in Yerevan. The
organizers of the festival are producing centre “Ovatsia” (Ovation)
and RA Ministry of Culture. However, as the Deputy of the Minister of
Culture Karine Khodikyan mentioned, the initiators of the festival
turned to the Ministry for help when the budget of the current year
was already passed. Nevertheless, the Ministry of Culture set to help
with the organization of the festival.

Particularly, it gave a building to hold the contest in.

“The Ministry of Culture considers the author song a very important
genre for us and we need new artists in the field,” Karine Khodikyan
mentioned.

The bards present at the press conference noticed that a festival of
author song hasn’t been held since 1999.

“And it means that a generation of new singers we know nothing about
has grown up since then,” Edward Zorikyan said. Tatevik Aghamiryan
mentioned that there is a great vacuum of author song in Armenia. “We
don’t even know on what level we are now,” she said.

As the chairman of the producing centre “Ovation” Samvel Mesropyan
said, at the moment there are 40-50 famous artists of this genre in
Armenia. And the festival aims at search of new names.

To note, applications for participation in the festival are accepted
until April 20. The first stage of the contest is going to be held
from May 10-15, and the gala-concert of the winners of the contest
and famous artists will take place from June 6-10. It is expected
that such famous representatives of Armenian author song as Rouben
Hakhverdyan, Armen Movsisyan, and Arthur Meschyan are going to take
part in the festival.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress