SEROUJ KRADJIAN SHINES FROM THE SHADOWS

[Yervant1]

KRADJIAN SHINES FROM THE SHADOWS

John Terauds

 

Toronto Star

http://www.thestar.com/entertainment/article/548613

Dec 6 2008

Ontario

 

Accompanying and arranging music for his wife, Isabel Bayrakdarian,

has paid off with Grammy nod

 

Some people prefer working alone in the spotlight. Others draw strength

and inspiration from collaborations.

 

Toronto pianist Serouj Kradjian belongs in the second category,

which may be why not many of us are yet aware of the substantial

talent living and working in our midst.

 

His biggest claim-to-fame right now is accompanying and arranging music

for his wife, soprano Isabel Bayrakdarian. Their latest collaboration,

a disc of songs by Armenian composer Gomidas, which Kradjian arranged

for chamber orchestra, earned Bayrakdarian a Grammy nomination for

Best Vocal Performance on Wednesday night.

 

As of this season, the pianist has also become a member of the

Amici Chamber Ensemble, as well as writing new music for them. This

high-powered chamber group includes Toronto Symphony principal clarinet

Joaquin Valdepeñas and assistant principal cello David Hetherington.

 

What you won't find Kradjian doing, at least in this part of the world,

is playing solo piano.

 

The roots of his unprepossessing need to share comes from an early

childhood in civil war-ravaged Beirut. Kradjian, now in his mid-30s,

is the oldest of four boys, born of Armenian ex-pats living in Lebanon

- by many accounts, an idyllic place to live before it was torn apart

by civil war starting in the mid-1970s.

 

Kradjian's parents weren't going to let anything get in the way of

their son's musical education. "When my father decided to bring in a

piano in the middle of the war, everybody thought he's crazy, because

that was the last thing people were thinking about," Kradjian relates

of a fateful day when he was 5 years old.

 

The piano was carried up to the family's fourth-floor apartment in

downtown Beirut, "where it became a source of love, if I can describe

it in one word," Kradjian continues.

 

The building's residents would cower in basement bunkers during periods

of heavy shelling. "When there was a break in the bombardments, my

father would take me up to the fourth floor so that I could practise

a bit," the pianist recalls.

 

"My parents used to sit beside me when I practised - they were vocal

critics sometimes, appreciative sometimes - but it really became

something which made us forget for a while the situation outside.

 

"That's my memory of what this instrument could do."

 

Even though a piano is not portable, Kradjian's father had chosen it

because there were a lot of piano teachers around, he says.

 

By the 1980s, the Kradjians, like so many other Lebanese, had given

up on peace returning to their ruined country. They were also afraid

that their sons would eventually be called for military service,

so they emigrated to Toronto.

 

Kradjian graduated with a degree in piano performance from the

University of Toronto in 1994, then went to the world-renowned

Hochschule fur Musik und Theater in Hanover, Germany, to study with

a favourite pianist, Einar Steen-Nokleberg. "His claim to fame is

the complete Grieg works for piano for the Naxos label," Kradjian

says. "It's wonderful. For me, it's the recording of those pieces."

 

Kradjian hadn't made a final commitment to a piano career until he

went to Germany. There, the school emphasized practical work over

theory. It is also where he discovered the joys of collaborating

with other musicians instead of spending solitary hours every day

practising solo material. "Looking around, all I saw was participating

in competitions. For most of my friends, not only pianists, it was

the thing to do," says Kradjian.

 

"So I made a conscious decision. It was not that I didn't like

competitions, but I found them too limiting and too lonely, both

on the stage and off the stage. I wanted to explore every type of

music making."

 

After graduating from Hanover, Kradjian took a teaching post at

the conservatory in Madrid, and made his first solo recordings with

Warner Music Spain. He is still officially on the faculty, but only

goes for master classes.

 

"Toronto is my main home base now," says Kradjian. He and Bayrakdarian

have a son, Ari, who turned 1 yesterday. Home is an important place

to be right now.

 

Kradjian says the first chamber music concert he ever attended was

given by Amici. Patricia Parr, the ensemble's pianist for two decades,

was his chamber-music teacher at U of T. So he feels honoured to be

able to pick up where Parr left off after retiring at the end of the

2005-06 season.

 

Kradjian's professional ideal is French pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet,

known worldwide as a superb accompanist and chamber-music collaborator

- as well as a top solo performer.

 

Tomorrow afternoon, Amici is getting together at the Glenn Gould

Studio to will play a new composition by Kradjian, as well as Olivier

Messiaen's Quartet for the End of Time, in honour of what would have

been the French composer's 100th birthday on Dec. 10. (For ticket info,

go to glenngouldstudio.cbc.ca/concerts/current/dec.html)

 

That masterpiece was written and first performed in a prisoner-of-war

camp during World War II.

 

It's fair to say that Kradjian may have been better prepared than

most to tackle the intense emotions and spiritual reflections behind

this music born in conflict.

 

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

Arranging his way toward Grammy glory

 

Late last summer, Isabel Bayrakdarian, left, released an album of

songs by Armenian composer Gomidas, recorded by the Armenian Chamber

Orchestra (a program the couple presented live in October at Roy

Thomson Hall with the Manitoba Chamber Orchestra).

 

Bayrakdarian earned a Grammy nomination on Wednesday for her vocal

performance on that album.

 

All of the orchestral arrangements were by Serouj Kradjian, who came

up with the light-as-air textures through trial and error: "Doing it,

listening to it, learning from my mistakes - learning what I don't

like, what I like," he says.

 

Kradjian calls Gomidas's piano originals "almost minimalist. There

are few notes on the page." So he wanted to be careful not to change

the music's character. The pianist says it's important to capture the

"meaning of the music, to give a why you're orchestrating it.

 

"There was a temptation to go bigger - symphony orchestra," instead

of chamber, he admits. "I started out, for some songs, to do a bigger

orchestra, but it did not convince me at all because it completely

changed the character."

 

Gomidas has been rearranged "many times," for string quartet for

example, but Kradjian says these versions are not true to Gomidas's

compositional spirit.

 

Kradjian says he works away from the piano most of the time when

arranging or composing, because he can hear the orchestra in his

head. It gives pianists more depth at the keyboard. "I believe it

really contributes to their imagination of sound and what they want

to bring out from a particular piano piece."