FOLK SONGS ‘LIKE A BALM’ TO ARMENIAN PEOPLE
By: Alison Mayes

Winnipeg Free Press
nt/music/folk-songs-like-a-balm-to-armenian-people -42177657.html?viewAllComments=y
March 31 2009
Canada

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

CON CERT PREVIEW

Isabel Bayrakdarian with the Manitoba Chamber Orchestra Tonight at
7:30 p.m.

Westminster United Church Tickets $26.50