Panorama.am
20:41 10/07/2009
SHOGHAKEN FOLK ENSEMBLE PERFORMS IN SLOVAKIA FESTIVAL
The Shoghaken Folk Ensemble, recent winners of the Best Folk Album
award at the 2008 Armenian National Music Awards, performed at the
Vychodna Folk Festival in Vychodna, Slovakia, as part of the
Armenia-Slovakia cultural exchange program. The ensemble was
accompanied to Slovakia by Minister of Culture Hasmik Poghosyan and
cultural attach Svetlana Sahakyan.
Led by vocalists Hasmik Harutyunyan and Aleksan Harutyunyan and
dudukist Gevorg Dabaghyan, the group performed Armenian song and dance
as well as traditional Armenian ceremonies at the festival. At the
opening concert, attended by Minister Hasmik Poghosyan, Shoghaken
performed along with groups from Romania, Croatia, and the Czech
Republic, each group presenting its countrys traditional folk
music. At the close of the concert, Slovakias Culture Minister, Marek
Madaric, thanked Shoghaken and presented Shoghaken members with a
medal of appreciation.
During the course of the their stay in Vychodna, Shoghaken performed
at various festival locations, including in the village of Liptovsky
Mikulas, where the musicians presented a concert of folk and
ashoughagan (troubadour) songs in the courtyard of the medieval
St. Nicolaus church. After the concert, the group gave interviews and
recorded a short concert for Radio Slovensko.
At the closing concert on July 5, Shoghaken treated the large outdoor
audience to scenes from a traditional Armenian wedding, with the parts
of the bride and groom played by young members of a folk group from
Ukraine. With green and red ribbons draped over the grooms shoulders,
Hasmik Harutyunyan sang Katsek, Berek and Aleksan Harutyunyan sang
Ohrnyal Barerar and Kanachatsav, with the sounds of the zurna and dhol
drifting into the mountains of Vychodna.
Founded in 1994 in Yerevan, Armenia, Shoghaken is currently preparing
f or concerts in Europe and Australia, as well as its first major
concert in Yerevan, planned for Sept. 4, 2009.
Source: Panorama.am
09/07/10/shoghaken/
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress