Opening idiomatic portals, MVF Band harnesses Yerevan’s jazz and contemporary scenes to reimagine Armenia’s Age-old sounds.

“We’ve woven together jazz ideas of improvisation, harmonic complexity, and ensemble fluidity with the musical tensions, melodies, and perspectives that distinguish Armenian folk music. We’re music makers in a modern world, creating original compositions that are a new Armenian sound.” – Miqayel Voskanyan

Centering the 11-string long-necked tar, Miqayel Voskanyan’s quintet draws on polyphonic roots, global rhythms, funk, and jazz’s tight grooves and improvisational play. Add to this Voskanyan’s expressive singing voice and you’ll find this dynamic, and ultimately uncategorizable work, at home in clubs, concert halls, and folk festivals.

Known for intertwining ancient folk idioms with progressive arrangements and original compositions, MVF Band challenges conventional thinking about the cross-pollination of Eastern and Western sounds and genres.

Dynamic, Exhilarating, Haunting New Armenian Sounds

New York Music Daily

Miqayel Voskanyan - Tar and Vocal
Davit Melkonyan - Alto/Soprano Saxophones
Arman Peshtmaljyan - Keyboards
Gurgen Ghazaryan - Bass
Movses Ghazaryan - Drums

on tour with center stage

February-March 2023

Travelers

8 on tour (5 musicians, band and communications managers, U.S. company manager)

Venues

Indoors or out: clubs, theaters, concert halls, and festival stages. Excellent sound system and some backline required.

Program Notes

MVF Band

Yerevan, Armenia

Miqayel Voskanyan - Tar and Vocal
Davit Melkonyan - Alto/Soprano Saxophones
Arman Peshtmaljyan - Keyboards
Gurgen Ghazaryan - Bass
Movses Ghazaryan - Drums

Program will be introduced from the stage

About MVF Band

Based in Yerevan, Armenia’s capitol city, MVF Band (Miqayel Voskanyan and Friends) has made music together for nearly a decade. Centering the 11-string long-necked tar, the quintet draws on polyphonic roots, global rhythms, funk, and jazz’s tight grooves and improvisational play.

Known for intertwining ancient folk idioms with progressive arrangements and its original compositions, MVF Band challenges conventional thinking about the cross-pollination of Eastern and Western sounds and genres.

Says Voskanyan about the quintet’s work: “We weave together jazz ideas of improvisation, harmonic complexity, and ensemble fluidity with the musical tensions, melodies, and perspectives that distinguish Armenian folk music. We’re music makers in a modern world, creating original compositions that are a new Armenian sound.”

MVF Band’s 2023 U.S. tour makes stops in Washington, DC; Baltimore, MD; Los Angeles, CA; Albuquerque and Santa Fe, NM; and New York City.

This performance will include tracks from MVF Band’s second studio album, Nightology, (Overton Records) which was released on December 31, 2022. This conceptual album tells a musical story about a long but magical Night.

Nightology album note

Once upon a time, there was a land that no one could find on the map.

People here were living a happy but lost life - they had forgotten who they were and couldn’t understand either themselves or the world. They were always curious to see beyond, look down at their land from a bird's eye view and finally find out what their land is on the map. Sometimes, they would even envy the birds for this.

Little did they know that instead of seeing beyond, they actually needed to see through, and instead of looking out, they needed to look inside and explore what’s rooted and grounded within them. The birds were wise, they knew about this but couldn’t explain it to the people - they wouldn’t understand their language.

Until one long night, when all the people and all the birds were asleep, a nightingale - the most astonishing one among the birds with its compelling voice and rich repertoire, stayed up longer. It flew around all the houses, singing to the windows of people trying all its different tones of voices hoping to touch their hearts and help them remember and understand. When it was almost losing hope, it heard familiar voices from a house in the far.

A group of five friends was singing and playing at the fireplace of a cottage. Noticing the nightingale, they let it inside, warmed it up, and started playing and singing together with the bird. Excited that it could find someone who would understand its indigenous language and translate its magical sounds into music, the nightingale sang about everything it knew about the world and the people of this land and told the wisdom of how to remember who they were.

This night took the longest. The Sun waited until the friends finished. When they were ready, they went out and faced a big crowd of people who went outside - they were worried about the unusually long night and thought the Sun wouldn't rise again. They walked into the crowd, stood firm on the ground, and started playing and translating the wisdom of the nightingale. The waves and beats of their music intermingled with the slowly rising rays of the long-awaited sun creating an audio-visual apparition. This aural musical vision left them speechless and with this, they suddenly could understand.

It took a never-ending night and ballad of Nightology to finally understand the world by recognizing themselves. Awakened in darkness, they realized that the only way out is through.

Credits

MVF Band is produced and managed by Oberton, Lusine Voskanyan, principal
Communications Manager: Tatev Mkrtumyan
Stream ‘Nightology’ on these platforms https://streamlink.to/NightologyAlbum

MVF Band is on tour in the U.S. as part of Center Stage, a cultural diplomacy program that has hosted performing artists from abroad in the United States since 2012. To date, 35 groups from around the world have made month-long national tours. In calendar year 2023, 11 ensembles from Armenia, Argentina, Ethiopia, the Philippines, and South Africa will meet and share their work from coast to coast.  As hosted by colleges and universities, festivals, music clubs, and cultural centers, Center Stage ensembles reach large cities and small towns. They engage with communities onstage, offstage, and online through performances, workshops, and discussions, artist-to-artist exchanges, master classes, and community gatherings, and return home to share these experiences with peers and fans.

Center Stage www.CenterStageUS.org

Producer: New England Foundation for the Arts
Adrienne Petrillo, Meghan Kuschner

General Manager: Lisa Booth Management, Inc.
Deirdre Valente, Lisa Booth

Production Manager: Robert W. Henderson, Jr.
Tour Advance: Aketzali Vazquez
On Tour Company Manager: Theresa L Teague

Center Stage is a public diplomacy initiative of the U.S. Department of State's Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs with funding provided by the U.S. Government, administered by the New England Foundation for the Arts in cooperation with the U.S. Regional Arts Organizations. General management is provided by Lisa Booth Management, Inc. www.CenterStageUS.org

Click here to access and download a PDF version of these program notes.

background

Opening Idiomatic Portals: MVF Band Harnesses Yerevan’s Jazz and Contemporary Scenes to Reimagine Armenia’s Age-Old Sounds

Carved from a single block of mulberry wood, the long-necked tar has been the faithful companion of generations of Armenian bards. It’s found a new life as a front-and-center jazz voice, thanks to the innovators of MVF Band (short for Miqayel Voskanyan and Friends). Sometimes sharp and percussive as a banjo, sometimes subtle and soft-spoken, in the capable hands of band leader and singer Miqayel Voskanyan, the tar speaks powerfully of contemporary life’s struggles and joys.

“We want to show that there is a genre, Armenian jazz,” reflects Voskanyan. “We’ve woven together jazz ideas of improvisation, harmonic complexity, and ensemble fluidity with the musical tensions, melodies, and perspectives that distinguish our folk music. We’re music makers in a modern world, creating original compositions that are a new Armenian sound.”

Set as a standard jazz quartet of sax, keys, bass, and drums — plus the tar, MVF Band has spent the last decade together exploring new directions in Armenian music and perfecting their on-stage connection, one band members jokingly compare to telepathy. Moving across genres, they have played major jazz festivals around Eastern Europe and Central Asia, represented Armenia at music industry events like MIDEM in France, and performed at the Smithsonian Folklife Festival and the Ford Theatre (Hollywood, CA).

U.S. Tour in 2022-2023 with Center Stage Season 6

MVF Band will return to the U.S. in 2022-2023 as part of Center Stage, the cultural exchange program that has connected performing artists from abroad with American communities since 2012. Five other music and dance ensembles from Argentina, Armenia, and Taiwan will also make independent tours with the program, promoting global ties and engaging with audiences on stage, off stage, and online. Center Stage is produced through a public-private partnership between the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs and the New England Foundation for the Arts.

Origins

Voskanyan grew up steeped in Armenia’s older sounds. As a young boy at music school, Voskanyan was fascinated by the bowed kamancha (spike fiddle), which, like the tar, is a traditional instrument played frequently in Armenia that has versions and cousins across the Caucasus and Persia. He desperately wanted to learn to play it — until he heard the tar: “When I went to music school, I accidentally heard the sound of the tar and had to find out what it was,” recalls Voskanyan. “I decided to play that instrument. I fell in love with the sound of the tar.”

After mastering the traditional repertoire, the thousands of years of secular and sacred songs, Voskanyan wanted to push his beloved instrument further. Voskanyan loved jazz, from Miles Davis and Chick Correa to Richard Bona and Bela Fleck, and how its improvisatory approaches resonated with Armenian traditional technique. He became an active part of the lively jazz scene in Yerevan, Armenia’s capital, and largest city, with its clubs, jam sessions, and festivals. He wanted to disprove that the tar was just for “old stuff.”

He crossed paths with fellow musician-jazz fans who were willing to experiment. “The band came together because of both the people and the instrument voices I want to hear. The guys are very open. I asked Davit [Melkonyan] if he wanted to play sax with tar. He said, ‘That’s crazy, but I’m ready. Let’s try,’” Voskanyan recounts. “He couldn’t imagine what it would be. But we practiced and jammed and found the sound of the right mix of tar and sax. That is the main sound of MVF Band, how a sax and a tar sound together.”

Pushing the tar in new directions — on its own or with other instruments — feels natural to Voskanyan. It’s part of what he loves about the instrument: “The tar is a multi-genre instrument. You can use it when and where you want. It makes you play everything,” he explains. “To use my instrument in other genres, I had to change the structure of strings. I added a pair of strings to the neck and now it can fit into that music more. But I also have a very old traditional instrument and I love it.”

Admixture of Sound

MVF Band weaves Armenian elements, both directly and conceptually, into their work beyond their use of traditional instruments to express contemporary sounds and states. Their arrangement of “Esor Urbat E,” a song traditionally about Good Friday that’s become a TGIF anthem in modern Armenia, shows how effortlessly the band can blend Armenian melodies with clever harmonic settings and catchy rhythmic breaks. Sometimes the Armenian cultural foundation is subtler, such as in “The Dance of Insomnia,” one of MVF Band’s recent compositions dedicated to the late-night struggles he faced, struggles he had to dance his way out of. The track features a choir that suggests spiritual traditions, yet it sits squarely in contemporary jazz, showing the breadth of sounds the band engages with.

Voskanyan and the band prove that this mix never strays far from funkiness, taking cues from the great, genre-melding jazz experiments of the 1970s. “In Yerevan” grooves hard with a sway that gives ample room for the tar to dialog with bass and piano as well as sax. “Shakaraklor,” named after a sweet treat, blends traditional percussion with tar thrums and snaps, segueing into a lively, melismatic song halfway through, with the tar perfectly following the voice.

This constant amalgamation creates what’s effectively a contemporary portal, bringing young Armenian listeners back to their roots and transporting international audiences to new musical places. “Even for Armenians, we’re living in times that, by fate or accident, have led people really far away from the origins of Armenian culture, especially Armenian music,” MVF Band communications manager Loris Kroyan reflects. “Our folk and traditional songs are sometimes ignored. Miqayel is creating an Armenian sound that reimagines and revitalizes them. Fans often get into the folk stuff via the jazzier pieces. That’s what happened to me! I found myself asking, ‘This is my music, why didn’t I like it?’ Now I love it -- and I understand.”

press

• Feature: Smithsonian Folklife Magazine – Born of a Whisper: Evolution of an Armenian Lullaby in the Time of COVID

• Review: New York Music Daily – Dynamic, Exhilarating, Haunting New Armenian Sounds from Miqayel Voskanyan

• Feature: The Armenian Mirror-Spectator – Miqayel Voskanyan and Friends Bring Dynamism from Armenia to the Modern Folk Scene

• Interview: Creative Armenia – The Tar Master

technical information

View and download production information as of August 2021 at the link below. A Technical Rider with these general conditions will be created for all Center Stage engagements.

MVF Band Technical Rider 5-2021.pdf

downloadable photos, billing & credits 

Minimum Billing
MVF Band
On tour as part of Center Stage
www.CenterStageUS.org

Credit Line
The following credit is required on the title page in all printed performance programs. We appreciate its use wherever else it's practical: brochures, posters, ensemble-only promotional materials, press releases, advertisements, etc:

MVF Band is part of Center Stage, a public diplomacy initiative of the U.S. Department of State's Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs with funding provided by the U.S. Government, administered by the New England Foundation for the Arts in cooperation with the U.S. Regional Arts Organizations. General management is provided by Lisa Booth Management, Inc.

Logo
Center Stage logo placement is encouraged. On web-based materials, please link from the Center Stage logo and/or written name to www.centerstageUS.org.

Assets
High-resolution promotional photos (photographer credit is in the file name), and several versions of the Center Stage logo are available at this link.