“Our Komitas”
Komitas Days in Collaboration with Art Universities
The 150th anniversary of Komitas and Hovhannes Tumanyan was celebrated at different levels, in various cultural places, and the celebrations still go on. Komitas State Conservatory of Yerevan hosts a series of events marking the anniversary of the great composer from November 19-25 under the title “Our Komitas”. On the recommendation of Professor at the Conservatory, Tsovinar Movsisyan, the Komitas Week is held with the participation of students and lecturers from three Armenian HEIs on art: Conservatory, State Academy of Fine Arts of Armenia and State Institute of Theatre and Cinema.
The Rector of Conservatory Sona Hovhannisyan in her speech welcomed the guests, the managers of participating HEIs, the students and spoke about the mutual impacts and influences of different types of art, the peculiarities of human mentality in terms of art in general, about his emotional richness, peculiarities of thinking, the influential power of art creations on human life. According to the organizer and initiator of the program, Tsovinar Movsisyan, such kind of cooperation between art institutions is meant to make the series of jubilee event more meaningful and rich; she outlined its non-formal nature, the attempt to introduce Komitas’ art in a new way, for which the students and the directors spared no effort to demonstrate the freedom and novelty found in Komitas’ art. “I am pretty sure that every work of art is permanent in case it communicates to the younger generation of the time”, she noted.
In other words, the real examination of an art work is left to the time, when it remains of interest for future generations when it is in line with the future artistic thinking and perception and allows new ways and forms of interpretations. The students of Conservatory succeeded doing so which was reflected in different musical performances. “Holy-holy”, “Soma Yar”, “Yerkinqn ampela” (the sky is cloudy), “Antouni”, “Oror” (lullaby), “Mshetsonts Bingyol”, “Akna Oror”, “Hov areq sarer jan”, “Chinar es”, “Chem kyrna khaghal”, “Avetiq”, those were the works introduced to the public. Students from the State Institute of Theater and Cinema performed recitals of Komitas. The students of State Academy of Fine Arts of Armenia participated in the event with their paintings.
The series of events on Komitas will continue the other days in the form of outgoing lectures, master classes, and annual scientific-creative student conference and will be concluded with an inter-institutional conference with participation of professors from the Conservatory, State Pedagogical University after Kh. Abovyan and Armenian-Russian Slavonic University. The conference materials will be published in the journal “Musical Armenia”. At the end of the concert program that left the audience in a high spirit, SAFAA vice-rector invited all the attendees to the next concert within Komitas Days to be held at SAFAA exhibition hall, on November 21.
Melanya Badalyan
Translated by Naira Stepanyan
