Armenian Canadian soprano Isabel Bayrakdarian began her North American tour Celebrating Gomidas Vartabed this past weekend, featuring music from her recently released Nonesuch debut, Gomidas Songs, and dedicated to victims of genocide both in her homeland and throughout the world. She is joined by the Manitoba Chamber Orchestra for the concerts, the first two of which were in California: at the Herbst Theater in San Francisco on Saturday and at the Segerstrom Concert Hall in Costa Mesa on Sunday. She performs tonight in her home country at the Orpheum Theatre in Vancouver.

The Star-Ledger's Bradley Bambarger gives the album behind the performances four stars, writing, "A charming artist with a warm, gleaming voice and up-and-coming opera career, the 34-year-old Bayrakdarian sounds utterly authentic in these piquant, touching songs." He also praises Bayrakdarian's husband, pianist Serouj Kradjian, for his "subtly ornamental string-and-wind arrangements, with the duduk's apricot-wood timbre a primary color." Read the full review at nj.com.

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San Francisco Chronicle Music Critic Joshua Kosman, in his review of Saturday's tour opener by "the brilliant Armenian Canadian singer," calls it "transfixing ... a wondrous showcase for singer and composer alike." He writes:

[T]he evening's main focus was Bayrakdarian herself, whose vivid, dark-hued tone and sumptuous phrasing imbued every piece of music with warmth and urgency. Her singing reached great heights of oratorical splendor when necessary, but the simplicity of some of the more straightforward songs was equally touching.

Kosman also praises Kradjian, whose "arrangements of the songs for string orchestra are superbly resourceful—sometimes answering the music's twists and turns with surprises of his own, sometimes content to serve as backdrop to Bayrakdarian's lustrous vocal turns."

Read the full concert review at sfgate.com.

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Richard S. Ginell, reviewing the following night's show for the Los Angeles Times, says the tour program, while centered on Gomidas, is also filled "with inspired and even unlikely links to other composers who filtered ethnic music through their own personalities." He found it to be "a fascinating concept whose real message was one of widespread ethnic preservation and suffering in the 20th century rather than the work of a single composer." Read more at latimes.com.

The Orange County Register's Timothy Mangan says that the concert was "an expression of national pride" for both Bayrakdarian and Krajian. Mangan describes the Gomidas's works as having "a special tang and simplicity," with many possessing "a haunting, mysterious quality." Bayrakdarian, he writes, "performed them with disarming sincerity. Most of the time, she pared down her silvery soprano to fit the intimate scope of the music, but she also had her operatic chops in reserve, resonating at peaks. She stressed the long line above all else, using vibrato sparely, suppressing self-serving nuance."

In addition to the folk songs are "love songs and children's songs, too, playful and sunny. Bayrakdarian negotiated the acrobatics in these latter pieces with lively grace. Kradjian's string orchestra arrangements of the piano accompaniments were models of restraint and good taste, while also atmospherically resonant." He sums up a particular instrumentation by Krajian in one word: "Lovely."

Read the review at ocregister.com.

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The Vancouver Sun's Lloyd Dykk spoke with Bayrakdarian leading to tonight's performance in that city, and in his introduction refers to her voice as "her ravishing soprano." In the article, Bayrakdarian prepares new listeners to the music of Gomidas by telling Dykk: "It may be a revelation." The article can be found at canada.com.