Save the Date! KUVO Presents—Tigran Hamasyan feat. Arthur Hnatek & Evan Marien

KUVO presents Tigran Hamasyan featuring Arthur Hnatek & Evan Marien at Boulder Theater. The concert was postponed due to covid and is now scheduled on June 11, 2021 – Tickets on sale now!

With pianist/composer/arranger/conceptualist Tigran Hamasyan, potent jazz improvisation fuses with the rich folkloric music of his native Armenia. Turning 33 in 2020, he’s one of the most remarkable and distinctive jazz-meets-rock pianists of his generation, earning plaudits from such legendary jazz pianists as Chick Corea and Herbie Hancock as well as avid listeners such as pianist Brad Mehldau. A piano virtuoso with groove power, Tigran’s latest adventurous recording for Nonesuch is this year’s compelling “The Call Within.”

For his scintillating improvisation, Tigran uses the melodic content based on the Armenian music and creates the harmonic content that instead of being the minor/major classical harmonies is based on Armenian modes applied to the piano. “When I improvise I use the musical vocabulary that comes from Armenia,” he says, “but I learned the art of improvisation through bebop. I think the ability to improvise comes from whether the part of your brain has been activated to this state where you require a huge amount of knowledge and can carry this information in your brain to be executed when needed. It is the balance among knowledge, control and the mysterious creation.”

Composed and produced by Tigran, his new album, 2020’s “The Call Within,” is an epic journey into the invisible inner world of the artist who, he says, despite having a physical body is living in a dreamlike world which is as realistic as the physical one.” He adds, “The artist lives in the world where the moment of the unconscious creation is the way to feel conscious. Unutterable seconds of longing, subliminal realization, and mostly joy fill the body as a work of art, a poem, or a melody is being born into this world for no apparent reason, but only for the humanity to discover what is invisible: the divine mystery.”

“The Call Within” also explores Tigran’s inspiration for maps from different time periods in history. He explores poetry, Christian and pre-Christian Armenian folk stories and legends, as well as astrology, geometry, ancient Armenian design, rock carvings and cinematography. The album blends the lines between historic reality and the imaginary world Comprising ten original compositions featuring Evan Marien on electric bass and Arthur Hnatek on drums, The Call Within is the most energetic and high-intensity recording of Tigran’s career. The album also features special guest artist Tosin Abasi on the furious prog-metal track, “Vortix,” and it spotlights vocalist Areni Agbabain and cellist Artyom Manukyan on “Our Film.”