Armenian pianist and composer Tigran Hamasyan has released his latest album, The Bird Of A Thousand Voices. This eclectic amalgamation of jazz, prog, and, of course, Armenian folklore is a remarkably polychromatic record, in line with his varicolored oeuvre, that blurs the boundaries among genres, styles, and eras.

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Born in Gyumri, Armenia, Tigran grew up listening to jazz greats such as Miles Davis, Wayne Shorter, and Herbie Hancock, while zooming around rural Armenia, as much as the English rock bands. Mesmerized by Herbie Hancock and the Headhunters’ jazz classic Chameleon, he transcribed the entire song, from the solos to every single guitar part, while still a child. He has been into heavy metal from his early years and expressed his love of Swedish band Meshuggah, quoting “Their rhythms are insane,” alongside Beethoven and Bud Powell.

His immaculate mastery of every aspect of music—be it melody, harmony, or rhythm— along with his virtuosity on the keys and astonishing passion for his native lore make his music unbelievably unique among his contemporaries and, dare I say, the legends of preceding generations. Tigran’s music has always been essentially improvisational. In his own words, “I’ve always improvised, even before I knew what jazz was.” With insane rhythms, complex harmony, and unforgettable melodies, Tigran can conjure all of these effortlessly while improvising.

In one of his books, Armenian composer and musicologist Arthur Shahnazaryan explained how each of the four modes in Armenian music relates to one of the four elements, each of these elements corresponds to specific colors, which in turn correspond to the vital organs in our body, using different versions of a tale of a prince and an anthropomorphized bird, the Hazaran Blbul. This was the inspiration for this concept album, The Bird Of Thousand Voices. Tigran infused different versions of the folktale, and the most prominent was the one written by the Armenian poet Serine.

Tigran opted for something similar to an opera on this record. With that in mind, he created leitmotifs for each character and developed these motifs. The music portrayed stories through its instrumental themes, often repeating. Tigran came up with the ambiance and melodic material of the album primarily through improvising, and these ideas evolved throughout the recording process. 

Tigran’s fascination with heavy rock has always been present in his records. This album also has copious heavy, head-spinning sections in his style of Djazz, interspersed with more ambient soundscapes or even entire ambient interludes. Although this album is different in many ways from his previous albums like Mockroot or Shadow Theater, it nevertheless retains the essence of a Tigran-Hamasyan album: a fusion of mystical Armenian folklore with extensive improvisations and synthesizer-heavy compositions, coated with his progressive rock and heavy metal influences.

The Bird Of A Thousand Voices

The Bird Of A Thousand Voices is an impressive project, in fact, Tigran’s biggest one so far. It is relevant not only in terms of the runtime of 90 minutes but also as a two-part feature film, a documentary, and an interactive computer game

Also, the album is presented as a transmedia stage show created in collaboration with Dutch director Ruben Van Leer, with whom Tigran worked on a couple of his music videos in 2012.

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Tigran Hamasyan: piano, synths, vocals; Areni Agbabian, Sofia Jernberg, Vahram Sargsyan: vocals; Layth Sidiq: violin; Marc Karapetian: electric bass; Nate Wood: drums, electric bass

The Bird Of A Thousand Voices was released on August 30, 2024 // Naïve, BLV8490