Author: Emma Nadirian

Saroyan memorialized Madera High

Emma Nadirian
The Madera Tribune
Feb 22 2020
 
 
 
History
 
Bill Coate
 
Madera County Historical Society
William Saroyan at Madera High School.
 
William Saroyan was apparently not the easiest person in the world with which one could deal. As talented and as well known as he was, he didn’t suffer a fool lightly, and he didn’t seem to need anyone’s approval. In fact this internationally acclaimed writer refused the Pulitzer Prize for his play, “The Time of Your Life.”
 
He almost never went to a college or university to speak because, as he said, “I can’t be bothered; it’s too much trouble and just a little silly.” However, on Jan. 27, 1977, he came to Madera High School to speak. Let me tell you how that came about.
 
It just so happened that Brenda (Najimian) Magarity was teaching English and drama at Madera High, and it also just so happened that her family knew Saroyan. If fact Brenda became his unofficial driver — not a chauffeur, but a friend, a driver.
 
At some point in the 1976-77 school year, Brenda decided that she wanted Saroyan to come to her class, so she asked him, and can you believe it? He said yes.
 
The date in January was set, but the young teacher didn’t tell anyone at school for fear Saroyan would back out at the last moment — something that occurred often, according to Magarity.
 
When she found out on that Thursday morning that Saroyan was indeed going to come to Madera, she told her friend and fellow teacher, Ben Bufford, and he helped her prepare for the writer’s visit to Madera, including a lunch in his home prepared by his wife, Milly.
 
When the students in Brenda’s first class came through the door that morning, they were greeted by dark-haired visitor with his trademark, drooping mustache that was nearly white.
 
Saroyan took to the Madera students immediately, and they liked him. He shared with them that the favorite books of his own were “The Human Comedy” and “My Name is Aram.”
 
One student asked him if it was really true that he dropped a cat off the water tower in Fresno as he said he did in “My Name is Aram.” Saroyan replied that the story was true. He wanted to see if it was true that cats always land on their feet; Saroyan claimed this one followed suit and ran away.
 
As Saroyan spoke and answered questions from the students, he did a strange thing. He asked the kids their names and then wrote them down. When he left Madera High, he put that list of names in his pocket. After lunch at the Buffords, Magarity took him home to Fresno.
 
Saroyan lived four more years, and before he died, he wrote one more book. He entitled it “Obituaries.” It was based on the annual list of important people who had died in 1976. Saroyan wanted to write about them, whether he knew them or not. Actually it was really a commentary on death by a man who was about to die, but in chapter 17, the author took a strange digression. He included a piece on the living, and those were the folks he met in his visit to Madera High.
 
He asked himself in the book why he got up at 5:30 in the morning in order to go to a high school and talk four times for free instead going to a college where he would be paid from $1,000 to $3,000 to speak once.
 
Saroyan wrote that the answer was simple. He had been asked by “a girl who teaches English and Drama there, and during the past three or four years, this Armenian girl has been a good kid at filling me in about life in a high school in a small town and has taken me in her Toyota to the laundromat and around and about. He was talking about Brenda (Najimian) Magarity.
 
Now Saroyan was in Paris when he wrote “Obituaries” which meant that he carried that piece of paper upon which he had written the names of the students he met at Madera High with him to France.
 
Here they are as they appear in Saroyan’s book—the Madera High kids with whom he was so taken: “Mary Elisalde, Donna Beckwith, Robin Dollar, Marie Catanezesi, Diana Seagraves, Debbie Fimbrez, Reida Irby (who Saroyan said was writing a novel entitled “Sharing Borrowed Treasure,”) Lori Kay Brady, Eleanor Hernandez, Shari Girardeau, Lisa Peterson, Darrell McCallen, Adolph Vizcarra, Gilbert Trujillo, Steve Funderburg, Tony Martin, Roger Accornero, Richard Flores, Rickie Elias, Jim Jenkins, Denise Hayes, Lesli Niino, Mary Ann Brown, Sherry Martinez, Julie Foresi, Kay Keating, McAllister Donnell, Toni Reno, Nancy Barton, Shari Mongaral, Debbie Ellington, Susan Munoz, Charlene Poore, Lee Ann Rutherford, and I guess that’s about it. All are alive and going to high school. They are good kids, and I liked meeting them.”
 
I think this is a good story; not because I wrote it, but just because it is good. A world class author who doesn’t like to speak to students comes to Madera High at the behest of one of its teachers and winds up recording the experience in the last book he would ever write.
  
In my view, that’s a tale worth keeping.

Film: The Armenian who symbolised France: Behind the scenes of Charles Aznavour

Emma Nadirian
The Sydney Morning Herald, Australia
Feb 20 2020
 
 
 
The Armenian who symbolised France: Behind the scenes of Charles Aznavour
 
By Jake Wilson
 
Aznavour by Charles screens as part of the French Fim Festival in March.

 
“It’s not usual to make a movie where you start with the footage and you don’t have a story,” says French filmmaker Marc di Domenico. “But at the same time, you do have a story, because this guy who did the footage is somebody very important.”
 
The guy di Domenico is talking about is none other than Charles Aznavour —singer, songwriter, actor, the son of Armenian immigrants who came to symbolise French culture to the world.
 
Aznavour was one of the most widely beloved of all 20th-century entertainers, and one of the most enduring: he started performing as a child in the 1930s, and gave his last concert in Japan in 2018, a month before his death.
 
Not so well known is the fact that besides acting for some of the great directors of French cinema — most famously, starring in Francois Truffaut’s 1960 new wave hit Shoot the Piano Player, which helped to launch him in the United States — Aznavour was also a filmmaker in his own right. From the late 1940s onward, he documented his world travels using a Bolex camera given to him by his mentor, the no less legendary singer Edith Piaf.
 
This material forms the substance of di Domenico’s documentary Aznavour by Charles, which paints a picture not just of Aznavour himself, but of the world as seen through Aznavour’s eyes: the steep streets of Montmartre where he lived as a young man, the busy streets of New York on his first visit, the lights of a Japanese TV studio, a trip down the Ubangi river in central Africa with straw huts perched on stilts above the water.
 
Di Domenico came to this project as a long-time friend of Aznavour’s son, Mischa, who is by his side to help promote the film (he looks strikingly like his father, though a little taller — Aznavour stood five foot two, and was sometimes referred to as “le petit Charles”).
 
His love of the French language, I think that’s what makes him French, and that’s what the people liked.
 
Mischa Aznavour
 
Through Mischa, di Domenico had known the Aznavour family since the 1990s, but he became closer to Charles when making an interview portrait for French TV.
 
“We spent a lot of time together, all day, every day, for three years. So that was the beginning of a beautiful friendship, as in the end of Casablanca.”
 
It was then that di Domenico gained access to the footage Aznavour had shot over the decades. “I started to watch all this material, silent movies, and I was shocked by the quality,” di Domenico says. “He’s shooting in a little boat in Africa and I was thinking, 'wow, what is he doing here?' It’s interesting.”
 
Director Marc di Domenico used film shot by Charles Aznavour over decades to create the documentary Aznavour by Charles. 

Looking at all this, he says, changed his view of Aznavour, and yet confirmed some of the things he had felt all along. “He was telling me, 'the place where I feel best is the street', and when I saw this, I said to myself ‘That’s true.’ He was not lying. I can feel, he’s in the street, and it’s a pleasure for him to be there … not to be in places you’re supposed to be when you’re a star.”
 
This is quite different, he adds, from the impression created when today’s celebrities post photos or brief videos online. “When you do Instagram or Facebook, it’s just to say 'Oh, look at me, I’m eating a pizza, or I’m drinking a Coke.' This is not the way he’s shooting — he’s shooting the world. It’s outside him. It’s not him.”
 
The ability to be “present in real life,” di Domenico says, was also one of the keys to Aznavour’s success as a songwriter. “He had this intuition, naturally, to capture the way the society is moving.”
 
One example is his celebrated song What Makes A Man A Man, a frank protest against homophobia written from the point of view of a lonely female impersonator — not a subject many stars of his magnitude would have been game to tackle in 1972.
 
Given his long acting career, the pleasure he found in operating a camera and the fact that so many of his songs tell stories, I’m curious if Aznavour was ever tempted to try his hand at directing a film professionally.
 
“If he really wanted to do it, he would have,” di Domenico says. “But he didn’t have the time, because when he would do something, he was very serious. He was writing, then performing on stage, then recording, acting. To direct a movie, it’s three years.”
 
 
Mischa agrees. “He would have loved to be a director, but what he loved more was to interact with the audience.”
 
Di Domenico emphasises that for Aznavour, performing, like filming, was always a dialogue with the public. “He had the universality and the feeling of the people, the real people, the common people. He was not intellectual. All his lyrics could be studied in school today, but he was very simple, he hadn’t done any study in school.”
 
Despite this "universal" quality, Aznavour was often viewed as quintessentially French — which is paradoxical on a couple of levels, given that his parents came from elsewhere.
 
“He’s not French French,” Mischa says. “But his love of the French language, I think that’s what makes him French, and that’s what the people liked. When he came to America, when he came to Spain, he was always being French. Not trying to be…”
 
 
Aznavour by Charles goes deep behind the glitz and glamour, capturing Charles Aznavour as he lived.

 
“Maybe the accent also,” Di Domenico adds. “When he was singing, he had the same accent as Maurice Chevalier.”
 
Something that could also be seen as very French is the bittersweet, even melancholic mood of many of Aznavour’s songs. But was this typical of the man himself, offstage?
 
“Not at all,” di Domenico says. “He was someone who was laughing every day, and joking, he had many, many friends.”
 
“I would say it’s more like a poetic vision of spleen,” Mischa breaks in, “which is not really melancholy. It’s like saudade, for the Brazilians … maybe something a bit sad, but it’s not sad.”
 
“If you look at the songs, they can seem sad, because they talk about sad love stories,” Mischa goes on. “But if you look closer” — he snaps his fingers — “there’s always a little twist at the end. So, OK, it’s over, but there’s always hope. That’s the difference from other beautiful French singers like [Jacques] Brel.”
 
As an example, he mentions another of Aznavour’s famous songs, Bon Anniversaire — in English, Happy Anniversary — in which a couple’s plans for a special evening are ruined by a series of farcical mishaps. “It’s like, everything went wrong, but we still love each other. And that’s what makes him him.”
 
 Aznavour by Charles is screening as part of the Alliance Francaise French Film Festival, running nationally March 10 – April 19. Jake Wilson travelled to France courtesy of the Alliance Francaise.
 
 

Economist: One should not expect major investments in Armenia until 2024

Emma Nadirian
Panorama, Armenia
Feb 19 2020

14:42, 19.02.2020

YEREVAN. – Armenia is not ready for major investments today. Former governor of the Central Bank of Armenia, economist Bagrat Asatryan, said this during a press conference today.

"This is not an issue for today," he added. “The last decades of Armenia's development were such that the flow of investments had to be reduced.

The growth of investments in Armenia was conditioned by specific transactions. Institutional solutions are needed here; in general, the environment is not like that. Of course, I understand that the authorities want to see greater investments every year, but much more needs to be done for it, to create that environment."

Asatryan noted that Armenia is not ready for large-scale institutional investments, especially if it is regarding direct foreign investments. "There is no need to wait for it until 2024," he said. “Here the state has to take responsibility, starting from developing specific small projects and presenting them to the international community, to contributing to the implementation of those programs; in that case, one can expect a positive trend.”

"Develop the judicial system, and I promise you that the flow of investments will increase qualitatively," Bagrat Asatryan added. “I also promise that the interest rates will considerably reduce in the banking system. There is also the issue of protection of property rights.”

Azerbaijan’s state media SOUND MIX Aliyev’s Munich speech to correct extraordinary faux pas

Emma Nadirian

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 14:42,

YEREVAN, FEBRUARY 18, ARMENPRESS. Azerbaijan’s State News Agency – AZERTAC – has attempted to fix President Ilham Aliyev’s extraordinary gaffe during the panel discussion with Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan at the Munich Security Conference in Germany.

When Aliyev began his introductory remarks, at one point he said in an apparent faux-pas “more than 10 countries recognize the independence of Nagorno Karabakh”. Perhaps the blunder was caused by Aliyev’s nervousness since this was an unprecedented discussion. But this error would’ve gone unnoticed if not for the resolute efforts of the Azerbaijani news media to “make things right”.

AZERTAC has turned to re-voicing, or dubbing if you will, Aliyev’s words, particularly the part “the independence of Nagorno Karabakh”, and switched the words with Aliyev saying “genocide of Khojaly”. The voice is even so similar to Aliyev’s that presumably it was taken from an earlier audio recording of the Azerbaijani president mentioning those words. And so, after turning a blind eye on journalistic ethics, AZERTAC’s edited version of Aliyev’s MSC speech became “more than 10 countries recognized the genocide of Khojaly”, something he didn’t say, something that did not happen.

Edited and translated by Stepan Kocharyan

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Asbarez: ABMDR Representatives Visit Western Prelacy

Emma Nadirian

Western Prelate Archbishop Moushegh Mardirossian welcomed the visit of Armenian Bone Marrow Donor Registry representatives to the Prelacy, headed by President Dr. Frieda Jordan. Archpriest Nareg Pehlivaian also joined in the visit, which took place on Wednesday, February 12.

Dr. Jordan first expressed thanks to the Prelate for welcoming the ABMDR members to the Prelacy each year to hear about the organization’s current and future plans. ABMDR members announced the expansion of their endeavors in the past year – now extending to Greece – with immediate plans for further expansion, as well an increase in the number of registered donors. Dr. Jordan referenced the support of community organizations and hospitals in the ABMDR’s success, and expressed her gratitude to the Prelate for bringing awareness to the organization’s mission through the Prelacy and its churches. Finally, the guests reported on their main forthcoming endeavors.

Prelate Mardirossian highly commended the ABMDR’s massive, vast, and valuable work, blessed the devoted service of its members, and concluded by presenting mementos.

Armenian Soprano Dazzles at Dresden Event

Emma Nadirian
February 10, 2 020

Soprano Ruzan Mantashyan performs at the 2020 SemperOpernball festival in Dresden, Germany

Armenian soprano Ruzan Mantashyan dazzled the audience at the SemperOpernball 2020 festival in Dresden on Friday with a dramatic performance of Tatiana’s aria from Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin opera.

Mantashyan became a household name last month after SemperOpernball organizers reneged her invitation when a Azerbaijani tenor Yusif Eyvazov said he would not perform with the Armenian soprano because of her ethnicity. After many protests and confrontation from Mantashyan’s agents, the singer was reinstated to the program

“I am happy that the performance took place and reached its logical and triumphant end,” Mantashyan told Armenpress after the event.

Yerevan Komitas State Consevatory lecturer Margarite Sargsyan shared a video of Mantashyan’s performance on Facebook, and praised the soprano. “This was truly brilliant. Well-done….This is our school,” she said.

Other musicians who performed at the concert included violinist Pavel Milyukov, soprano Yulia Muzichenko and pianist Alexander Kashpurin, as well as the Azerbaijani Eyvazov.

Taron Simonyan: The highest-level agitation campaign has already begun on the referendum issue

Emma Nadirian
Arminfo, Armenia
Feb 10 2020

ArmInfo.The President of Armenia could appeal to the Constitutional Court on the issue of referendum, but did not use this option. On February 10, MP from  Bright Armenia faction Taron Simonyan stated this in a conversation  with reporters.

According to the MP,  Bright Armenia  expressed tits position on this  issue during a vote in parliament.  "We convened a special meeting to  discuss the matter regarding our future tactics before the  referendum. I don't know exactly when this meeting will take place,  but we will make a statement on this issue in the near future,"  Simonyan emphasized.  He also emphasized that the highest level  campaign  had already begun. "The campaign has not only begun, but  Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan made a corresponding statement on his  Facebook page. This means that the campaign has already begun and is  taking place at the highest level," the MP noted.

When asked whether it is possible at the level of judges of the  Constitutional Court to appeal the appointment of a referendum,  Simonyan replied that the President and one fifth of the MPs can  appeal to the Constitutional Court, "he concluded.

It should be noted that on February 6, the Armenian parliament  decided to submit draft amendments to the Constitution to the  referendum. 88 MPs voted for this decision, 15 MPs – against , and  abstained-0. Many deputies and human rights activists said that this  decision is unconstitutional, since initially the deputies had to  send their proposal to the Constitutional Court. To recall, even  before the vote, the Prosperous Armenia faction stated that it would  not take part in the vote.

PM claims they have found the ‘dream model’ of a Constitutional Court

Emma Nadirian
Panorama, Armenia
Feb 6 2020

Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan proposed on Thursday a nation-wide referendum on constitutional and related changes. The statement came at the extraordinary session underway in the country’s National Assembly.

The proposed amendments relate among other things to removing the requirement for the Constitutional Court to check the compliance of draft legislation with the Constitution of Armenia, and subsequently change the procedure of revision of the Constitution itself. In addition, a constitutional amendments will result at ending the terms of several members of the current Constitutional Court with immediate.

“We have found the dream model of the Constitutional Court,” the PM asserted, speaking at parliament.

“We have gathered here today to launch this process and we should adopt a decision to solve the issue with people. I hope that the National Assembly will make a decision on changing Article 213 and call for nation-wide referendum. Changing the Article in question will result in ending the terms of the members of the Constitutional Court elected through old system. This will happen if the citizens of Armenia go to electoral stations vote for the proposed amendment on the scheduled day of the referendum, vote for the revolution and vote for the rule of the people,” Pashinyan said.

To note, Armenia’s authorities question the legitimacy of 7 out of 9 judges of the current Constitutional Court who had been elected prior to the entry into force of the 2015 constitutional amendments. The argument is that according to the previous text of the Constitutional the judges in question had been elected as members of the Constitutional Court. Article 213 of the revised Constitution, however, provided that the Chairman and members of the Constitutional Court appointed prior to the entry into force of the 2015 Constitution should serve their terms.

Sports: Armenian weightlifter Simon Martirosyan wins silver at Fajr Cup

Emma Nadirian
Panorama, Armenia
Feb 5 2020

Sport 16:10 05/02/2020Armenia

Leading Armenian weightlifter Simon Martirosyan has won a silver medal at the International Fajr Cup 2020 in Rasht, Iran.

The athlete lifted a total of 410 kg in the heavy weight class, the National Olympic Committee reported.

Martirosyan lifted 180kg in snatch and 230 kg – in clean and jerk.

Ruben Aleksanyan was also set to compete in the same weight class, but the weightlifter had to withdraw due to his injury. 

Music: Rock Aid Armenia: how the ultimate version of Smoke On The Water was recorded

Emma Nadirian
Louder
Feb 5 2020

By Dave Everley (Classic Rock) 10 hours ago

What happened when members of Queen, Pink Floyd, Black Sabbath, Iron Maiden, Rainbow, Yes and more came together to record a Deep Purple classic

(Image credit: Michael Putland / Getty Images)

The 1980s was the decade of the charity single. In the wake of Band Aid’s world-beating 1985 hit Do They Know It’s Christmas, you couldn’t turn on the TV without seeing a bunch of pop stars putting on their serious faces and churning out a song to raise money for a worthy cause.

Heavy metal did its bit. In 1986, Hear N’ Aid weighed in with Stars, a charity single featuring Ronnie James Dio, Dee Snider and Ted Nugent raising money to combat world hunger via the medium of 80s rock. Three years later, another group of A-list musicians released a money-raising cover of a classic anthem. The song was Smoke On The Water, the all-star band was Rock Aid Armenia.

The brainchild of charity campaigner John Dee, the project – initially called Live Aid Armenia – was conceived in the wake of the 1988 Armenian Earthquake, which killed over 25,000 people and devastated the country‘s infrastructure.

“I felt I had to do something, after helping with the immediate fundraising that was taking place in the UK, I decided to launch a fundraising push that would gather together people I know in the rock business,” Dee later said.

Smoke On The Water wasn’t the first Rock Aid Armenia single. Members of Aswad, Culture Club and Haircut 100 had released a cover of Marvin Gaye’s What’s Going On? earlier in 1989. But it would be the guitar-centric follow-up that provided the project’s most enduring moment.

The first person Dee called was Dave Gilmour, just off tour with the reconstituted Pink Floyd. Others swiftly fell in line behind him, including Queen guitarist Brian May, who in turn called Black Sabbath’s Tony Iommi and ex-Free/Bad Company singer Paul Rodgers. Deep Purple frontman Ian Gillan had seen the aftermath first hand after playing a show in the Armenian capital Yerevan a year after the quake hit, and signed up.

“I took a trip to [the city of] Spitak and saw the devastation,” Gillan recalled. “There were so many vivid images. The Mayor Of Spitak told me that all music had stopped in the city: on the radio, in the church, even the birds had stopped singing.”

With Gillan onboard – and Deep Purple manager Phil Banfield involved in the organisation – Purple’s 1971 signature song Smoke On The Water was a shoe-in for this million-dollar collective to cover. “It’ll probably be a horrendous racket,” joked Brian May during one of the five sessions that took place at Metropolis Studios between July and September 1989.

While May was present for the very first session on July 5, he was little more than an onlooker due to a broken arm. “I had an argument with the kerb on a skateboard,” he explained. He’d recovered enough by the second session to lay down the immortal Smoke On The Water riff with Dave Gilmour, the latter cutting loose on a trés 80s Steinberger headless guitar. 

(Image credit: Michael Putland / Getty Images)

May wasn’t the only representative from Queen. Bandmate Roger Taylor was roped in to play drums, though it transpired he was second choice. John Dee had originally wanted Rush’s Neil Peart to play on the track, but a shift in dates scuppered the plan.

Peart’s absence barely dented the Fantasy Football-levels of star quality on display. The prog wing put in a show of strength: Yes bassist Chris Squire flew in from LA, while his sometime bandmate Geoff Downes shared keyboard duties with Keith Emerson. The latter insisted on including a snippet of ELP’s Fanfare For The Common Man in the song. “I wanted it to be a musical contribution,” he said. “If it was anything less than that, I would have just sent the money in,” he added churlishly.

The guitar frontline was no less impressive. Tony Iommi pitched in with his own take on the greatest riff he never wrote, though even the Sabbath guitarist was overshadowed by the presence of the song’s original architect, Ritchie Blackmore. “Ritchie has yet to put his piece on, so he’ll probably rub everyone else off,” said Brian May wryly before the Man In Black arrived for the second session.

For some participants, it was an opportunity to fanboy out. Iron Maiden frontman and Purple devotee Bruce Dickinson enthusiastically admitted that he had been “playing this in pubs when I was 17.” Paul Rodgers was more serious. “This kind of thing is great because all of the politics that separate various people and their various things can be thrown out of the window,” he said.

The all-star version of Smoke On The Water was released in November 1989 – virtually the last charity single of the decade. It was far from the “horrendous racket” Brian May predicted. That iconic riff was bigger than any of the guitarists playing it, Ritchie Blackmore included. Gillan, Dickinson and Rodgers took a verse each, with the Purple man belting out the chorus with help from Bryan Adams, who had coincidentally dropped by the studio, only to find himself roped into providing back vocals.

The single peaked at a disappointing No.39 in the UK singles chart, though it marked the start of an enduring relationship with the country of Armenia for both Ian Gillan and Tony Iommi. The pair re-teamed in 2012 to release a single under the name WhoCare, with proceeds going to rebuilding a school in the Armenian town of Gyumri, which had been destroyed in the original earthquake. Bizarrely, Iommi went even further, writing the Armenian entry in the 2013 Eurovision song contest, the power ballad Lonely Planet, performed by Dorians. 

Rock Aid Armenia’s Smoke On The Water might not have troubled Do They Know It’s Christmas for title of Most Successful Charity Single Ever, but the people involved can hold their heads high. “I am very proud of my participation in that project,” Brian May recalled. For Ian Gillan, there was another reason to look back fondly: “It was more fun than some of the sessions we had in Purple.”

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