Armen Chakmakian / Ceremonies Feature Story

FEATURE STORY - CEREMONIES

From the pages of his life Armen Chakmakian draws inspiration for his passionate keyboard compositions. "The instrumental pieces I write are very autobiographical. My best tunes emerge from deep within me when I’m composing for a special occasion or someone meaningful in my life.”

During the latter part of 1995, I experienced a number of endings and new beginnings in my personal and professional relationships. This caused me to reflect on the importance of rituals in society and led me to produce a thematic album of instrumental music called Ceremonies. To me, these compositions evoke memories of graduations, weddings and life transitions of birth, death and renewal," says Armen.
As keyboardist for the GRAMMY®-Award winning band Shadowfax from 1991-1996, Chakmakian began developing his signature style, New World Jazz; a blend of indigenous Armenian and Arabic influences with contemporary jazz and world elements. "My melodies are almost folk-like. Rhythm is an essential ingredient in my music. It has the power to make you want to move, but melody is God. A great melody is addictive. You want to hear the tune over and over again. The times I need to chill out is when my creativity peaks. It's very therapeutic for me to sit at the piano or synthesizer and let the music play through me."

The title cut, Ceremonies expresses Armen's range of emotions at the loss of fellow Shadowfax member, Chuck Greenberg who passed away in 1995. "There's an Egyptian rhythm which is played for you only once in your life; at your wedding. I first heard it at a time when I was searching for musical inspiration. I kept flashing back to the memorial service celebrating Chuck's life and it inspired me to write this piece for him."

"I wrote A Time to Heal to express the feeling of turning negatives into positives. Gypsy Rain reminds me of graduating and moving on. You feel nostalgic about leaving a comfortable environment, but there's a sense of excitement about moving to the next stage of life. Distant Lands is rooted in my ancestor's soil. It's actually a collage of old and new Armenian melodies. Within the melodies, you can hear the pain in the collective voice of the Armenian people who have suffered countless atrocities throughout their history. I envisioned one person appealing for inner peace in Echoes of a Prayer. Enchantress is about seduction, and it features a seductive zurna solo in the middle of the composition. A Kiss and a Sigh was originally composed for solo piano for my wife and played at our wedding. Each piece on Ceremonies is distinctive but the harmonic content is the glue that holds it all together," adds Armen.

A who's who ensemble of jazz and world artists guest on Ceremonies including Alex de Grassi of Windham Hill fame on acoustic guitar, Djivan Gasparyan on duduk, zurna and vocal and John Bilezikjian on oud. Fellow Shadowfax players add their special magic to the production with Andy Abad on acoustic guitar and tres, and Ramon Yslas, a percussionist with Strunz & Farah and Jon Anderson, on cajon, pandiero and other percussion instruments, and Stu Nevitt on drums, who in the Shadowfax tradition, plays a variety of exotic percussion including Nigerian metal shakers and Ethiopian dance rattles. Martin Flores can be heard on dumbek, djembe, sa-bongo, drum set; Greg Ellis, from the Narada duo Vas, on tar and udu drum; Doug Lunn, who has played with Mark Isham and Andy Summers, on bass, and Andre Harutyunyan on dhol, dumbek and finger djembe.

Chakmakian, a native of Glendale, California, who hails from a musical family, attended Berklee College of Music, UCLA and USC where he studied the History of Armenian Music before embarking on his professional career. During his formative years, he began classical piano at age seven and joined his uncle's Armenian band at age eleven. He sums up his passion for music, "I've strived all my life for excellence and to create an individual sound... music that sounds like me. Now, that I'm realizing my goal, I plan to keep evolving as a musician and composer by keeping my sound fresh and compose a body of work that will live on."

Ceremonies is an eclectic collection unlike anything you've heard before. Within its play list, there is passion, drama and alchemy that blends the earthiness of the ancient world with modern-day societies need for communion. Exotic percussion rhythms meld with memorable melodies that dance in your head long after the music stops. Ceremonies is an album to be savored over and over again.