Pianist and composer Tigran Hamasyan's "Ara Resurrected (Dawatile Remix)," a remix of a track from his 2020 album, The Call Within, was recorded by Dawatile—producer, composer, and multi-instrumentalist David Kiledjian—in France, and co-produced with Hamasyan, with Dawatile adding electronic elements to Hamasyan’s piano playing from the original recording.
Pianist and composer Tigran Hamasyan has released "Ara Resurrected (Dawatile Remix)" on Nonesuch Records. The new track, a remix of a song originally released on Hamasyan’s 2020 album, The Call Within, was recorded by Dawatile—producer, composer, and multi-instrumentalist David Kiledjian—in France, and co-produced with Hamasyan, with Dawatile adding electronic elements to Hamasyan’s piano playing from the original recording.
The Call Within, released on Nonesuch in 2020, comprises ten original, self-produced compositions. The album, which Jazzwise calls “an exceptional recording for exceptional times” and Hamasyan’s “strongest artistic statement yet,” is a journey into the artist’s dreamlike inner world, taking inspiration from his interest in maps from different eras, along with poetry, Christian and pre-Christian Armenian folk stories and legends, astrology, geometry, ancient Armenian design, rock carvings, and cinematography—blurring lines between historic reality and the imaginary world. The Call Within was included on Albums of the Year lists by Jazzwise and BBC Music Magazine, and was called “a pounding, high-intensity adventure,” by Mojo. “Neither background music nor easy listening, The Call Within is as in-your-face as instrumental music gets.”
Hamasyan released “Revisiting the Film,” a variation on The Call Within track “Our Film” last year, featuring drummer/composer Morgan Ågren. You can watch Hamasyan perform a solo piano rendition of "Our Film," which NPR Music called his “most enterprising release,” as well as two earlier tunes, for an NPR Tiny Desk (Home) Concert here.
Hamasyan began playing piano at the age of three and started performing in festivals and competitions when he was eleven, winning the Montreux Jazz Festival’s piano competition in 2003. He released his debut album, World Passion, in 2005 at the age of seventeen. The following year, he won the prestigious Thelonious Monk International Jazz Piano Competition. Additional albums include New Era; Red Hail; A Fable, for which he was awarded a Victoires de la Musique (the equivalent of a Grammy Award in France); Shadow Theater; and Luys i Luso. His Nonesuch debut, Mockroot (2015), won the Echo Jazz Award for International Piano Instrumentalist of the Year; subsequent records for the label include An Ancient Observer (2017) and the companion EP, For Gymuri (2018). Last year, he was awarded for the Deutscher Jazzpreis international category in Piano/Keyboards. In addition to awards and critical praise, Hamasyan has built a dedicated international following, as well as praise from Chick Corea, Herbie Hancock, and Brad Mehldau.
