VISITING ARMENIAN MUSICIANS SHINE WITH BABOIANS AND COMPANY SUMMER CONCERT
By Andy Turpin
visiting-armenian-musicians-shine-with-baboians-an d-company-summer-concert/
August 19, 2009
BELMONT, Mass. (A.W.)-On Aug. 17, Berklee School of Music guitar
professor John Baboian, his son guitarist Alex Baboian, drummer
Karen Kocharyan, and visiting bass guitarist Artyom Manukyan and
saxophonist Artur Grigoryan presented a summer jazz concert at the
First Armenian Church.
Beginning with Cole Porter’s "Night and Day," the band opened with
smooth base, perfectly timed drums, and lead Nuevo-Spanish guitar by
the elder Baboian that cut through the molasses of the summer heat
with ease.
Alex Baboian rifted together with his father, not like dueling banjos
but like a symbiotic marmalade of Jobim tonal bliss.
But whenever Grigoryan’s sax cut into the set for another solo, the
audience applauded to be swayed in his dazzling notes again like a
woman giddy on champagne.
Between sets, John Baboian recounted how he met Grigoryan and
Manukyan. "Last June, Armenia sent a delegation to the U.S. to learn
how to raise awareness for the arts in Armenia and it was then that
Berklee and Armenian organizations started talking about sending over
musicians to Boston."
The band continued with "All the Things You Are." Grigoryan bleated
his notes with the beatnik romance and cheeky nonchalance of a Bukowski
Cuba Libre with a Tom Collins chaser, which led deftly into R. Silver’s
"For My Father," where Alex Baboian’s solo notes fell like billowed
raindrops on a starry Route 66 drive to unforgettable.
Manukyan, with brooding jive, ended the set with a thoughtful and
bad boy solo that, combined with Grigoryan’s sax, teased a desert
rose over the audience’s ears before its crescendo.
The evening concluded with "Yervanti," resounding in Grigoryan’s
solo like the ending to an Armenian fable that doesn’t end happily,
but justly and with a wry toast.
Here’s wishing Grigoryan and Manukyan a safe journey back to Yerevan
this week, with the hope that they’ll return to charm jazz audiences
in Boston again soon.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress