The strange archaic beauty in Komitas Vardapet’s (1869-1935) music is still an insider’s tip. He was an Armenian priest, composer, music teacher and ethnomusicologist. However, more and more can now be heard about the “forgotten folk hero” (The Guardian). At Enjoy Jazz, Jan Garbarek and the Hilliard Ensemble, Anja Lechner & François Couturier and Marc Sinan have all drawn attention to Komitas. Without his dedication to ethnomusicology, Armenian profane music, traditionally passed on by word of mouth, would not have survived the 1915 genocide. In 1906 in Paris, Komitas composed a cycle of six dances for piano, not only enrapturing contemporaries like Claude Debussy, but also pianist and pianoforte virtuoso Keiko Shichijo who recorded the “Six Dances” in Amsterdam, her chosen home city, in 2016, telling the world about “music from long ago and far away” (producer Arnold de Boer). With this concert, the Festival also welcomes the EinTanzHaus in Mannheim as a further, new and very special venue.
A coproduction by the EinTanzHaus and the Enjoy Jazz Festival.
