ARAM DEMIRJIAN CONDUCTS FAMED CELLIST YO-YO MA AND SILK ROAD ENSEMBLE
By Armand Andreassian

am-demirjian-conducts-famed-cellist-yo-yo-ma-and-s ilk-road-ensemble/
April 16, 2009

Aram Demirjian has had a hectic schedule since graduating from Harvard
in 2008 and leaving his post as director of the Bach Society Orchestra
of his alma mater. His attention has been focused on selecting an
institution to further his studies and career as a conductor. To
that end, he has travelled extensively throughout the United States
auditioning at many prestigious music schools and conservatories. A
unique opportunity brought Demirjian back to his campus in Cambridge
to conduct the celebrated world-famous cellist Yo-Yo Ma and members
of his "Silk Road Ensemble." Jack Megan, director of the Office for
the Arts, contacted Demirjian a short time prior to the concert to
conduct the ensemble, as the professional conductor Ma had requested
was unavailable to assume the role.

An evening program entitled "Witness," organized by the Humanities
Center and Offices of the President and Provost, represented the
contribution of the arts and humanities in celebration of the
60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights
(the groundbreaking United Nations document, signed in 1948, is
being commemorated in a series of events during Harvard’s 2008-09
academic year).The event, which was held at the Memorial Church,
was sold out within a couple of hours after the box office had made
the tickets available.

"Witness" displayed the creativity of music, dance, and literature
for nearly three hours to a responsive full house.

Homi Bhabha, director of the Humanities Center, said, "The arts and
humanities are instruments of aspiration and empathy as well as vivid
documents of injustice and longing. They provide the world an ethic
of public virtue."

Before the readings of brief passages in literature by 14 Harvard
scholars, the audience rose to its feet and performed a modern dance,
in place, with outstretched arms led by Damian Woetzel, a one-time
principal dancer of the New York City Ballet. One of the readers,
Toni Morrison, the 1993 Nobel Prize winner in literature, said of
our new modern world that the arts "will have an impact on ethic and
human rights..

"Night Music: Voice in the Leaves," written by Uzbekistani composer
Dimitri Yanov-Yanovsky, was the longest of the musical pieces performed
that evening by Ma and his ensemble with Demirjian conducting.

When asked for a comment regarding the evening’s program, Demirjian
said, "It’s always a fabulous experience to work with any professional
musician, particularly one of Yo-Yo Ma’s calibre, but to work
specifically with Mr. Ma who is not only the greatest cellist in the
world but also one of the most profoundly humble people in music and
all of the arts was incomparable. Yo-Yo Ma is a superb performer but
an even greater communicator.

Anybody who interacts with him inevitably learns something. Working
with him, for me, is not only a lesson in music and creativity but
also a discovery of the depths to which an artist, simply by the
example he sets, can move and inspire those around him."