To call Tigran Hamasyan unique would be an understatement. He is the only Armenian pianist and composer blending elements of jazz, metal, and Armenian folk music into a syncretic original sound. When I first discovered his music in high school, I was absolutely blown away by the rhythmic complexity; it was unlike anything I had heard before. A devout listener since, I even included one of his compositions on my senior recital a month ago. Needless to say, when I saw Hamasyan had a Chicago stop at Thalia Hall on his current tour, I knew I had to be there.
On the evening of Tuesday, March 25, I joined a large audience eagerly awaiting Hamasyan’s performance at Thalia Hall. My first time at the venue, I was struck by its ornate beauty. Modeled after the Prague opera house, the hall was built in 1892 and has served as a hub for artistic performance and community ever since.
Shrouded in fog-machine smoke, Hamasyan finally took the stage along with a drummer, bassist, and an additional synth player. Basked in blue lights, they began with a rather understated opening: relaxed, quiet solo piano with Hamasyan’s signature whistling doubling his delicate piano melody. Bass and synths gently layered in, maintaining the ambient, meditative feel of the piece as Hamasyan switched over to synth and began lyricless singing with heavy reverb. The packed crowd remained silent, still, and reverent. Cymbal rolls from the drummer marked the climax of the piece as Hamasyan played louder and more lush on the piano, before symmetrically returning to the quiet intro and fading out to cheers and applause from the crowd.
The next song started similarly chill, but already with more of a drum groove, before red lights coordinated with launching into a loud, intense metal-influenced section. This juxtaposition was a through-line in the show; jumping from beautifully delicate, soft upper-register piano melodies that sounded like folk songs to dark, intense, heavy, loud metal sections reminiscent of math rock. All of Hamasyan’s music also features odd time signatures, insane metric modulations and at times even superimposing one time signature on top of another, elements probably only fully appreciated by fellow musicians in the audience. It is highly intellectual music disguised by how easy and effortless they make it look. With such specific time feels, you have to be incredibly precise, accurate and exacting; any rhythmic rounding or estimating ruins the whole thing. They certainly deliver, with not a single misstep as they maintain metronomic accuracy even through the most rhythmically-complex passages. Until you have tried yourself to perform one of Hamasyan’s songs, as I did for my senior recital a month ago, you cannot fully appreciate the difficulty of what they accomplish.
Hamasyan did not speak and address the crowd until after the first three songs. Then, he only said “Hello, Chicago!” and briefly introduced the other musicians. Later on, he spoke a little about the music they performed, all from his newest album The Bird of A Thousand Voices, released in August of last year. The album is just one part of a larger multi-media project including an online video game, dramatic film series, kinetic art installation, and a staged performance theatrical adaption. It is all based on the ancient Armenian folk tale Hazaran Blbul, about a mythical bird that brings harmony to the world with a thousand different songs. As a result, the music from this project in particular sounds epic and cinematic, and I could tell Hamasyan put a lot of emotion and passion into his singing and playing.
With a whopping 24 tracks, they could not play everything on the album, but some they did perform included “Red, White And Black Worlds,” “The Saviour Is Condemned,” “Forty Days In The Realm Of The Bottomless Eye,” and “The Well Of Death And Resurrection.” When synths, layering, and other electronics are used in the studio, it can be hard to translate the exact album sound to a live setting, which can lead to disappointment for fans highly familiar with an artist’s discography (like myself in this case). However, I was impressed at how similar to the record everything sounded and left very satisfied by the performance.
While the Armenian folk music influence can be heard in some of the melodic material, and the metal influence comes out in the sound of certain sections and the math rock rhythms, Hamasyan’s jazz influence becomes most pronounced when he takes solos. I could hear some jazz language and harmony coming out during his extended solos, which always garnered loud cheers from the audience. Hamasyan also allowed the drummer and synth player to shine with their own solos on some of the songs. The drummer consistently busted out mind-bending rhythms and grooves while the synth player could lay down super fast runs with metronomic accuracy. Sometimes, Hamasyan would play running eighth-note lines so complex that I thought they had to be improvised, but then I would realize that another musician on stage was doubling them, so they had to be written out, though the band played entirely from memory with no sheet music. I found myself making a stank face multiple times during the show.
On the last song, Hamasyan invited the audience to sing a delicate melody with him as he whistled and played it on piano. It was a motif that had been strategically recurring throughout the show and was now embedded in our subconscious. Guided by Hamasyan, the audience’s hums created a beautiful and touching moment of serenity, reflection, and connection that mirrored the subdued intro to the show before the band launched into a high-energy, uptempo closer. When they finished, they stood, bowed reverently, and exited the stage, but the audience’s ceaseless cheers brought them back out for a dynamic encore.
Hamasyan maintained his unique originality by delivering a live performance unlike any I have heard before. Since becoming a fan of his music, seeing him live has been on my bucket list. I left Thalia Hall feeling incredibly fulfilled and content. With all the conflict and strife in the world today, we are in desperate need of harmony. Like the mythical bird of a thousand songs, Hamasyan brings healing to the world with his music.
