On Wednesday, June 19th @ 5pm, Velvet Einstein speaks with composer and documentarian, Mary Kouyoumdjian. Together they will discuss Kouyoumdjian’s most recent piece for Kronos Quartet called “The Space Between” that will be premiered as part of the Kronos Festival 2024.
Tune in to learn about how Kouyoumdjian navigates topics of war, conflict, displacement, and genocide in the performance hall. They will also discuss Kouyoumdjian’s use of discomfort as a tool for engaging audiences and her Pulitzer Prize Finalist piece, “Paper Pianos“.
Mary Kouyoumdjian is a composer and documentarian with projects ranging from concert works to multimedia collaborations and film scores. As a first generation Armenian-American and having come from a family directly affected by the Lebanese Civil War and Armenian Genocide, she uses a sonic palette that draws on her heritage, interest in music as documentary, and background in experimental composition to progressively blend the old with the new.
A strong believer in freedom of speech and the arts as an amplifier of expression, her compositional work often integrates recorded testimonies with resilient individuals and field recordings of place to invite empathy by humanizing complex experiences around social and political conflict.
Photo Credit: Desmond White
