The Naghash Ensemble / Festival Katowice Culture Nature Songs of Exile, Songs of Wisdom - NOSPR

Kostandin Erznkaci, one of the first Armenian poets to extol the beauty of nature and the female body, pondered in his verse the beauty of flowers that bloomed ‘from the sorrow of the earth’. Mkrtich Nagash, archbishop of Amida and spiritual leader of the Armenians in Mesopotamia, banished from the city for building a church with a dome higher than the spires of the neighbouring mosques, compared exiles to birds that had become separated from their flock and could not find rest. The composer John Hodian, an American-born descendant of Armenians who survived the genocide of 1915–1917, feels himself to be a modern-day garib, an eternal wanderer, vainly seeking a home around the world. If he finds one at all, it is in Armenian poetry, which he arrays in music fusing everything remembered and overheard along the way by the diaspora of Armenian exiles: native folklore, Western classical music, jazz, rock and postminimalism.

[translated by John Comber]

Duration of the concert (including break): approx. 110 minutes