Mayrig

Mayrig, which means “mother” in Armenian, paints a musical picture of the twisting paths and fragments of history that make up the world of one family. It is a 65-minute show created by cellist and composer Karen Ouzounian and composer, pianist and animator Lembit Beecher, in which the voices of Karen’s mother and grandmother are interwoven with original arrangements of Armenian music of her family’s past home of Anatolia, songs and stories drawn from their post-genocide home of Lebanon, and the music of Charles Aznavour. New and recent compositions by Beecher, Layale Chaker, Niloufar Nourbakhsh and Ouzounian expand upon themes of generational transmission, rootedness and uprootedness, with music teeming with passion and celebration, resilience and rage. Opening and closing the program is Marin Marais’s Les Voix Humaines, music from hundreds of years ago providing a window into the present. Juxtaposing the specifics of family history—captured through interviews and extemporaneous recordings of gatherings around the kitchen table—with beloved music drawn from along the way, Mayrig is an invitation into an immersive and intimate world of memory and association: a home whose structure is made out of music and all the powerful and tender nuances of the human voice, leading the audience to an experience that is universal and shared.