The Diocese
Posted: 12/12/2019
St. John Armenian Apostolic Church announced today that it will host a concert by world-renowned, Grammy®-nominated operatic soprano Isabel Bayrakdarian at 6:00 p.m. on Saturday, January 18, 2020.
This special event, “Isabel Bayrakdarian and Friends: A Musical Celebration of Gomidas at 150,” will feature the works of the renowned Armenian composer, ethnomusicologist and conductor Gomidas Vartabed in recognition of the UNESCO-celebrated, 150th anniversary of his birth.
The concert will be an all-encompassing celebration of Gomidas’s diverse works. It will feature new arrangements of his sacred and secular pieces for choir and solo voice, a collection of children’s songs and prayers, and arrangements of folk songs arranged for voice and string quartet.
In addition to Ms. Bayrakdarian, whose performances and recordings have garnered numerous honors and awards throughout the world, the concert will feature guest musicians from Los Angeles; Fresno; and the University of California, Santa Barbara Department of Music. Among those performing will be the choral ensemble Fresno Coro Vox Aeterna, under the direction of Dr. Anna Hamre, professor of music at Fresno State University.
Considered the founder of the Armenian national style of music, Gomidas (1869–1935) collected and transcribed more than 3,000 pieces of Armenian folk music in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, in addition to composing his own works. His contemporary, playwright and novelist Arshag Chobanian, called him the “savior of Armenian music.”
Ms. Bayrakdarian, whose awards include first prize in Placido Domingo’s prestigious annual Operalia competition for young operatic singers in 2000, has performed with the San Francisco Opera, Paris Opera, the Metropolitan Opera and the Lyric Opera of Chicago, as well as with opera companies in Barcelona; Florence; London; Los Angeles; Salzburg; Toronto; and Matsumoto, Japan. She also has appeared with premier orchestras under the direction of such eminent conductors as Michael Tilson Thomas, Seiji Ozawa, James Conlon, David Zinman, Nicholas McGregor, and Alan Gilbert.
Ms. Bayrakdarian’s 2008 album, Gomidas Songs, was nominated for a Grammy® Award for Best Classical Vocal Performance and features arrangements of 20 of Gomidas’s works. In Canada, where she was raised, she won four consecutive Juno Awards for Classical Album of the Year from 2004 through 2007, and her latest recording, Mother of Light: Armenian Hymns and Chants in Praise of Mary, was nominated for a Juno Award in 2018. She also was the featured vocalist on the Grammy® Award-winning soundtrack for the blockbuster film The Two Towers, from The Lord of the Rings trilogy.
Among other accolades received by Ms. Bayrakdarian—who is currently Associate Professor of Voice at the University of California, Santa Barbara—are the Marilyn Horne Foundation Competition Award; Queen Elizabeth II Golden Jubilee and the Diamond Jubilee Medals; the George London Award; the Canada Council for the Arts’ Virginia Parker Prize; and the Arbor Award from the University of Toronto, from which she holds a bachelor’s degree in biomedical engineering. The Republic of Armenia has awarded her with its Komitas Medal and its Movses Khorenatsi Medal, the latter being the nation’s highest cultural honor.
Tickets for the January 18 concert are $75.00 and may be purchased online via Eventzilla: (https://events.eventzilla.net/e/isabel-bayrakdarianconcert150th-anniversary-of-gomidas-2138755183).
St. John Armenian Apostolic Church is located at 275 Olympia Way in San Francisco’s Midtown Terrace neighborhood.
