StandArt (Nonesuch)
Tigran Hamasyan
Released April 29, 2022
Jazzwise Top 20 Releases of 2022
DownBeat Four-and-a-Half-Star Review
YouTube:
https://music.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_kRQj2aoRcwVUFAFfLjCNPZhkAWxsuToUY
Spotify:
https://open.spotify.com/album/1j9abB0wpxOjBxSmdeNIbP?si=K_OcygfwSnys1JaeqXwTfw
About:
Pianist and composer Tigran Hamasyan’s StandArt—his first album of American standards—will be released on April 29, 2022, on Nonesuch Records. StandArt includes songs from the 1920s through the 1950s, by Richard Rodgers, Charlie Parker, Jerome Kern, David Raksin, and others; it also includes a piece Hamasyan improvised with his bandmates—bassist Matt Brewer and drummer Justin Brown—and trumpeter Ambrose Akinmusire, who is featured on two of the album’s tracks. Other special guests include saxophonist and label-mate Joshua Redman on Charlie Parker’s “Big Foot,” as well as saxophonist Mark Turner on Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein’s “All the Things You Are.”
Produced by Hamasyan and recorded last spring in Los Angeles, StandArt is Hamasyan’s first release of American music, having previously only released original compositions and traditional Armenian music. “With this record, I really wanted to apply different techniques and ideas I’ve developed over the years to a repertoire that I finally had an opportunity to re-visit, and to send a message that I really appreciate this music and am thankful for it,” he says. “I love these compositions and melodies so much that, to me, it’s like Armenian folk music. As an immigrant—an Armenian-American—I relate to these composers and musicians from various backgrounds who have that kind of history, a dark history, but managed to succeed in an embodiment of freedom. In that way, I feel like I want to be part of this, to find something in the tradition of where I came from.”
StandArt follows Hamasyan’s 2020 album, The Call Within, which took inspiration from his interest in maps from different eras, along with poetry, Christian and pre-Christian Armenian folk stories and legends, astrology, geometry, ancient Armenian design, rock carvings, and cinematography—blurring lines between historic reality and the imaginary world. It was included on Album of the Year lists by BBC Music Magazine and Jazzwise, which called it “an exceptional recording for exceptional times” and Hamasyan’s “strongest artistic statement yet.” Hamasyan began playing piano at the age of three and started performing in festivals and competitions when he was eleven, winning the Montreux Jazz Festival’s piano competition in 2003. He released his debut album, World Passion, in 2005 at the age of seventeen. The following year, he won the prestigious Thelonious Monk International Jazz Piano Competition. Additional albums include New Era; Red Hail; A Fable, for which he was awarded a Victoires de la Musique (the equivalent of a Grammy Award in France); Shadow Theater; and Luys i Luso. His Nonesuch debut, Mockroot (2015), won the Echo Jazz Award for International Piano Instrumentalist of the Year; subsequent records for the label include An Ancient Observer (2017) and the companion EP, For Gymuri (2018). Last year, he was awarded for the Deutscher Jazzpreis international category in Piano/Keyboards. In addition to awards and critical praise, Hamasyan has built a dedicated international following, as well as praise from Chick Corea, Herbie Hancock, and Brad Mehldau.
Track Listing:
1. De-Dah (Elmo Hope) 4:15
2. I Didn’t Know What Time It Was (Richard Rodgers / Lorenz Hart) 7:13
3. All the Things You Are feat. Mark Turner (Jerome Kern / Oscar Hammerstein II) 5:44
4. Big Foot feat. Joshua Redman (Charlie Parker) 7:30
5. When a Woman Loves a Man (Bernard Hanighen / Gordon Jenkins / John Mercer) 4:40
6. Softly, As in a Morning Sunrise (Sigmund Romberg / Oscar Hammerstein II) 5:45
7. I Should Care feat. Ambrose Akinmusire (Alex Stordahl / Paul Weston / Sammy Cahn) 3:49
8. Invasion During an Operetta feat. Ambrose Akinmusire (Ambrose Akinmusire / Justin Brown / Matt Brewer / Tigran Hamasyan) 2:25
9. Laura (David Raksin / John Mercer) 6:27
Personnel:
Tigran Hamasyan: piano (1-9)
Matt Brewer: acoustic bass (1, 2, 4-6, 8, 9)
Justin Brown: drums (1, 2, 4-6, 8, 9)
Mark Turner: tenor saxophone (3)
Joshua Redman: tenor saxophone (4)
Ambrose Akinmusire: trumpet (7, 8)
Recorded
April 11 – 13, 2021 at Stagg Street Studio, Los Angeles, CA
Produced and Edited by Tigran Hamasyan
Engineered and Mixed by Pete Min
Assistant Engineer: Trent Slatton
Mastered by Nate Wood, Kerseboom Mastering, Brooklyn, NY
Paintings
and Drawings by Gaguik Martirosyan
Design by Yeva Babayan
Review:
In his first album of standards, Tigran Hamasyan is doing what this music was meant to do: reveal the ways different musicians hear and respond to our common possession and inheritance. Perhaps this was an album that had been long-awaited, but there is nothing rushed or restless about these interpretations. We find Hamasyan playing in registers that remind us that this music is as vibrant as ever, that it is as generative as when it was first brought into the vocabularies of the artists who made them standards. And so it is refreshing. And it also easy, not in the sense that it lacks complexity—the one departure from the stan – dards, “Invasion During An Operetta,” demon – strates that. Yet it is music that gives one a sense of ease, a fluidity that settles one’s soul. Hamasyan’s engagement with the tradition is backed by bassist Matt Brewer and drummer Justin Brown, and special guests Mark Turner, Joshua Redman and Ambrose Akinmusire, all stal – warts of the scene, who narrate this feeling, whose care for these classic tunes manifests beautifully.
Joshua Myers (DownBeat)