Featured Stories
Artist Sells His Soul
Fans of Armen Chakmakian’s music now know just how far he will go to give them more of the music they want to hear. After the release of Ceremonies, an introspective album that celebrates rituals, Armen turned up the tempo a notch to record more of a band album focused on spontaneous performance. Because he wanted the freedom to record whenever inspiration struck, Armen knew he needed to build a home studio to record his new project, Caravans.
He began by calling in favors from friends who had recorded with him before, and networking to outfit his studio. Along the way to fund the project, Armen sold first his beloved grand piano that he had taken his first music lessons on when he was a child, and then, his car. For anyone who has ever visited or lived in the Los Angeles area, being without a vehicle is akin to selling one’s life blood. But, with production delays and mounting costs, even these measures were not enough. Finally, Armen did the unthinkable, he sold his home. With bills still left to pay, he soon came to the conclusion that he had only one option left.
Like Robert Johnson before him, Armen stood at a crossroads and decided to sell his soul! However, he wasn’t willing to make a deal with the devil. Instead, he created an auction on eBay announcing to the world: Los Angeles-Based Musician Selling His Soul. The auction went on to explain in a very humorous fashion just how few people in the music biz actually have a soul to begin with, so here’s an opportunity to buy one that has been called everything from old to remarkable. (The full text is below).
In actuality, the auction was an opportunity to advertise tiered levels of sponsorships for investor participation. Although he received no bids on eBay, Armen felt he was onto something. He sent a similar e-mail out to his fans and received exactly the amount of sponsorship that he needed to do his mastering. This also led to an offer from noted recording engineer Steve Durkee, whose impressive resume includes a six-year stint with Prince as well as recording and mixing music for feature films, to mix the album.
“I had hoped my eBay auction might spark interest from some of the news media,” reflects Armen. “That didn’t happen, but it was really amazing how exactly what I needed to finish Caravans showed up at exactly the right time.”
Armen Chakmakian has created and produced his own Field of Dreams, and it is called CARAVANS.
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Featured Story: Ceremonies
From the pages of his life Armen Chakmakian draws inspiration for his passionate keyboard compositions. "The instrumental pieces I write are very autobiographical. My best tunes emerge from deep within me when I’m composing for a special occasion or someone meaningful in my life.”
During the latter part of 1995, I experienced a number of endings and new beginnings in my personal and professional relationships. This caused me to reflect on the importance of rituals in society and led me to produce a thematic album of instrumental music called Ceremonies. To me, these compositions evoke memories of graduations, weddings and life transitions of birth, death and renewal," says Armen.
As keyboardist for the GRAMMY®-Award winning band Shadowfax from 1991-1996, Chakmakian began developing his signature style, New World Jazz; a blend of indigenous Armenian and Arabic influences with contemporary jazz and world elements. "My melodies are almost folk-like. Rhythm is an essential ingredient in my music. It has the power to make you want to move, but melody is God. A great melody is addictive. You want to hear the tune over and over again. The times I need to chill out is when my creativity peaks. It's very therapeutic for me to sit at the piano or synthesizer and let the music play through me."
The title cut, Ceremonies expresses Armen's range of emotions at the loss of fellow Shadowfax member, Chuck Greenberg who passed away in 1995. "There's an Egyptian rhythm which is played for you only once in your life; at your wedding. I first heard it at a time when I was searching for musical inspiration. I kept flashing back to the memorial service celebrating Chuck's life and it inspired me to write this piece for him."
"I wrote A Time to Heal to express the feeling of turning negatives into positives. Gypsy Rain reminds me of graduating and moving on. You feel nostalgic about leaving a comfortable environment, but there's a sense of excitement about moving to the next stage of life. Distant Lands is rooted in my ancestor's soil. It's actually a collage of old and new Armenian melodies. Within the melodies, you can hear the pain in the collective voice of the Armenian people who have suffered countless atrocities throughout their history. I envisioned one person appealing for inner peace in Echoes of a Prayer. Enchantress is about seduction, and it features a seductive zurna solo in the middle of the composition. A Kiss and a Sigh was originally composed for solo piano for my wife and played at our wedding. Each piece on Ceremonies is distinctive but the harmonic content is the glue that holds it all together," adds Armen.
A who's who ensemble of jazz and world artists guest on Ceremonies including Alex de Grassi of Windham Hill fame on acoustic guitar, Djivan Gasparyan on duduk, zurna and vocal and John Bilezikjian on oud. Fellow Shadowfax players add their special magic to the production with Andy Abad on acoustic guitar and tres, and Ramon Yslas, a percussionist with Strunz & Farah and Jon Anderson, on cajon, pandiero and other percussion instruments, and Stu Nevitt on drums, who in the Shadowfax tradition, plays a variety of exotic percussion including Nigerian metal shakers and Ethiopian dance rattles. Martin Flores can be heard on dumbek, djembe, sa-bongo, drum set; Greg Ellis, from the Narada duo Vas, on tar and udu drum; Doug Lunn, who has played with Mark Isham and Andy Summers, on bass, and Andre Harutyunyan on dhol, dumbek and finger djembe.
Chakmakian, a native of Glendale, California, who hails from a musical family, attended Berklee College of Music, UCLA and USC where he studied the History of Armenian Music before embarking on his professional career. During his formative years, he began classical piano at age seven and joined his uncle's Armenian band at age eleven. He sums up his passion for music, "I've strived all my life for excellence and to create an individual sound... music that sounds like me. Now, that I'm realizing my goal, I plan to keep evolving as a musician and composer by keeping my sound fresh and compose a body of work that will live on."
Ceremonies is an eclectic collection unlike anything you've heard before. Within its play list, there is passion, drama and alchemy that blends the earthiness of the ancient world with modern-day societies need for communion. Exotic percussion rhythms meld with memorable melodies that dance in your head long after the music stops. Ceremonies is an album to be savored over and over again.
