Tigran Hamasyan

Tigran Hamasyan, an Armenian pianist, composer, and keyboardist, draws his creative foundation from the scales and modes of traditional Armenian folk forms while also incorporating elements of jazz and progressive rock. His 2011 Verve release A Fable foregrounds those folk roots, whereas the 2013 album Shadow Theater fuses jazz and progressive pop textures with folk materials. Mockroot followed in 2015 with fresh compositions in a comparable vein, and the same year ECM issued Luys i Luso, a cycle of reimagined sacred pieces spanning five centuries, scored for piano and voices to mark the centenary of the Armenian genocide. Two years afterward, An Ancient Observer integrated Armenian folk and sacred sources into jazz, prog rock, and electronica frameworks. Hamasyan supplied the score for the 2019 film They Say Nothing Stays the Same. The 2020 Nonesuch album The Call Within took cues from contemporary and historical maps, poetry, Armenian culture, and geometry. In 2022 he issued the loud, angular standards collection StandArt, and the 2024 Naïve release The Bird of a Thousand Voices realized a musical narrative drawn from an early-twentieth-century tale by Gayane Grigor Gaboyan.

Born in 1987 in present-day Gyumri, Armenia, Hamasyan began playing his family’s piano at age three and entered a music academy at six. Around age ten his family relocated to Los Angeles, where instruction from Vahag Hayrapetyan, once a student of jazz pianist Barry Harris, introduced him to jazz—especially the work of Thelonious Monk, Charlie Parker, Art Tatum, and Miles Davis—which he fused with the folk and sacred repertoire of his Armenian upbringing to shape a singular compositional voice. At sixteen he claimed first prize in the Montreux Jazz Festival’s piano competition in 2003; three years later he won the Thelonious Monk International Jazz Piano Competition. Additional honors include the 2005 Concours de Solistes de Jazz de Monaco and the 2013 Vilcek Prize for Creative Promise in Contemporary Music.

With his ensemble Aratta Rebirth he recorded the 2009 album Red Hail. His Verve debut arrived two years later as the solo piano-and-vocal project A Fable, issued simply under the name Tigran. Shadow Theater appeared in 2013 to wide acclaim, supported by a band, strings, voices, and electronics from Jan Bang; that same year he received the Vilcek Prize. His Nonesuch debut, Mockroot, surfaced in 2015 and combined original electro-acoustic pieces with a traditional Armenian song. Also in 2015 he made his ECM debut with Luys i Luso, recorded the previous year with the Yerevan State Chamber Choir under conductor Harutyun Topikyan, presenting Armenian sacred music from the fifth through twentieth centuries in arrangements for solo piano and chorus to observe the hundredth anniversary of the Armenian Genocide.

Although his homeland’s traditional music continued to supply material for exploration and invention, he revisited jazz in 2016 with the double-length ECM album Atmospheres, an electro-acoustic collaboration with Arve Henriksen, Jan Bang, and Eivind Aarset. He moved back to Armenia in 2016. His second Nonesuch album, An Ancient Observer, emerged in March 2017; recorded and mixed chiefly in France by Antoine Gaillet for FLAM Music, it gathered compositions written over the preceding four years, two of them rooted in traditional Armenian melodies. Some works were fully notated while others supplied flexible frameworks for improvisation. In characteristic fashion the stylistic range encompassed Baroque dance forms, Armenian folk sources, J-Dilla-style hip-hop grooves reconfigured for piano, and passages employing pedals routed to a synthesizer. Five further tracks from those sessions appeared in 2018 as the EP For Gyumri, named after his birthplace and introduced by the video single “Rays of Light.”

Hamasyan composed and recorded the original score and soundtrack for director Joe Odagiri’s film They Say Nothing Stays the Same. He tracked and released The Call Within across various American studios between late 2019 and early 2020. The ten original compositions featured primary support from electric bassist Evan Marien and drummer Arthur Hnatek, along with guests that included longtime collaborator vocalist Areni Agbabian, cellist Artyom Manukyan, guitarist Tosin Abasi, and the Varduhi Art School Children’s Choir. Produced by Hamasyan, the album sought to convey a passage through the pianist’s dreamlike inner realm, drawing on his fascination with historical maps, poetry, Armenian folk narratives, ancient Armenian design, astrology, geometry, rock carvings, and cinematography; Nonesuch issued it in August 2020.

Two years later he released StandArt, the most unconventional entry in his discography to that point, comprising eight jazz standards and one original piece. Working with bassist Matt Brewer and drummer Justin Brown, he invited saxophonists Joshua Redman and Mark Turner plus trumpeter Ambrose Akinmusire to stretch the material through expansive harmonic reinterpretations. The 2024 Naïve album The Bird of a Thousand Voices reimagines the traditional Armenian narrative “Hazaran Blbul.” Its single “The Kingdom” merges music, story, and visual art into an interactive online experience for desktop and mobile platforms. The project revives the centuries-old firebird legend as a contemporary metaphor for a world seeking connection and balance amid ecological, psychological, and spiritual challenges.