by Armen Chakmakian
TruArt Records, P.O. Box 5513, Glendale, CA 91221
[818] 240-6029
www.truartrecords.com
Here’s an album I played more than I would have originally because it kept sitting by the CD player and I never bothered to put it away. That comes from having a CD collection that continually outgrows its housing. In any case, this music grew on me after a few times through it. Ceremonies fits in a New Age, World, or perhaps Jazz category; it has the rhythms and feel of jazz in a lot of ways, but the melody and harmony go a different and subtler direction, often evoking shades of the Middle East, and often a dark or more introspective sound that might make you look a little deeper inside yourself than you had planned originally.
Chakmakian, from the band Shadowfax, plays keyboards and give them the spotlight most of the way through. He brings is other members of that group as support musicians. Guitarist Alex de Grassi, well known in some new age circles, also appears. Armen’s arrangements are surprisingly simple for the groove he sets down; a collection of exotic percussion carries the day, and it doesn’t leave a lot of room for instruments to go flying all over the place. It helps create the mood without ever overwhelming it, and lets the melody become the star.
Both the title track and another called "Distant Lands" feature a really haunting sounding instrument called a duduk, played by Djivan Gasparyan. It’s sort of like a combination of a sax and a viola, with a vibrato that evokes the long ago and far away. "Distant Lands" brings home a collection of Armenian melodies, reminding us that Armenia itself has often been geopolitically in the wrong place at the wrong time, and suffered for it for hundreds of years.
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