The Moscow Times, Russia
Dec 1 2006
The Duduk Master
Djivan Gasparian, whose music has been featured on Peter Gabriel
albums and in Hollywood blockbusters, plays at the Kremlin Palace.
By Svetlana Graudt
Published: December 1, 2006
When I met Djivan Gasparian in his suite at the Peking Hotel in
central Moscow, the 78-year-old musician was shaving with a cordless
razor. He told me to call him Uncle Djivan and offered me a seat on
the sofa. Dressed in a warm sweater and fighting a slight cold, the
soft-spoken Gasparian was meeting journalists ahead of his concert
next Monday with the Russian National Orchestra in the Kremlin
Palace.
Gasparian is a master of the duduk, an oboe-like instrument that has
been played in Armenia for at least 1,200 years and has lately
appeared in a number of Hollywood movie soundtracks.
Although he has performed snippets of music with some of the world’s
leading orchestras, Monday’s concert will be his first full-length
performance, featuring a variety of duduk compositions. These will
include excerpts from the soundtracks to "Day Watch," "The Last
Temptation of Christ" and "Gladiator," as well as reworked Deep
Purple songs and popular Armenian and Russian melodies.
"I want to play so everyone will like it," he said. "The duduk sounds
very beautiful with a symphony orchestra. It is like brother and
sister with bassoon, oboe, strings. It adds beauty to an orchestra."
The musician, who was born in a village outside Yerevan, credits his
father, an illiterate bricklayer, for introducing him to music.
"My father was a good singer, but he wasn’t professional. He sang
just like a National Opera singer and told stories about love and so
on. He sang both male and female parts. He had a very beatiful voice
and he built the most beautiful buildings in Yerevan that are still
standing."
When Gasparian was 7 years old, he heard a three-piece band playing
accompaniment to a silent film. That was how he first heard the
duduk.
"As they say, it was love at first sight. It went straight to my
heart," he recalled.
Gasparian approached the band’s duduk player and asked him for his
instrument. After some pleading, the man gave it to him, and
Gasparian spent the next winter learning to play it. The next year,
Gasparian met the man again and so impressed him with his playing
that the man gave him another duduk.
In 1948, Gasparian joined an amateur ensemble that eventually took
him to a music festival in Moscow. After the final concert, he was
given a Pobeda wristwatch on behalf of Stalin, who was in the
audience.
"I took the watch and all of Armenia knew that Djivan got a watch
from Stalin. I didn’t realize [its importance] — I was just a
teenager — or else I would have kept the watch."
Later, he joined various professional song and dance emsembles and
took first prizes in competitions in the Soviet Union and around the
world.
Twenty years ago, Gasparian moved to the United States. He is now a
familiar face in Hollywood, where he records film music and
collaborates with musicians like Peter Gabriel, Michael Brook, Brian
Eno, Sting and Queen guitarist Brian May, all of whom he considers
his friends. Gasparian said he seldom goes back to his native
Armenia, though he does give the occasional concert there.
A fully self-taught player, he doesn’t practice much before concerts.
"For my instrument, the first thing you need is soul. I almost don’t
need to practice. I am a good improviser. I quickly pick up any
traditional music played on national instruments, be they from Japan,
Italy, Germany."
The duduk, called the dziranapogh in Armenian, is made from wild
apricot wood and has nine finger holes, including one for the thumb.
Its present name has been around since the 1920s and is thought to be
derived from the Russian dudka, or pipe. It has a range of one
octave.
Initially, the duduk was seldom heard outside of Armenian circles.
Gasparian has taken it almost singlehandedly to stages around the
world, where he performs with jazz and rock musicians. He has even
formed a duduk quartet, which includes bass, tenor, soprano and alto
duduks.
"I never thought I would become what I am now. It just happened this
way. I simply play well. Nothing else. I know that when I play,
people have shivers going down their spine. I get them myself. When I
do something new and I really like it, I get shivers, too."
Djivan Gasparian and the Russian National Orchestra play Mon. at 7
p.m. at the Kremlin Palace. Metro Alexandrovsky Sad. Tel. 928-5232.