New Album from Kronos Quartet
and composer Mary Kouyoumdjian
I’ve loved Kronos Quartet for many, many years and even had the pleasure of interviewing David Harrington for The Arkansas Times. You can read “Music is a living, breathing thing: A Q&A with Kronos Quartet” here. Long champions of living composers, the quartet also championed my show Of Note, which aired on NPR station KUAF 91.3 FM for many years.
Today they announced WITNESS, a new album releasing March 14 on Phenotypic Recordings and it’s a total scorcher of a collaboration with composer Mary Kouyoumdjian. A 2024 Pulitzer finalist and first-generation American, her family was displaced to Lebanon during the Armenian Genocide.
They’ve shared an excerpt from the three movement work “Bombs of Beirut” today. Kouyoumdjian elaborates on the movement:
“Lebanon, once the refuge where my grandparents and great-grandparents sought safety from the Armenian Genocide, became the dangerous home my parents and brother were forced to abandon during the Lebanese Civil War (1975–1990). We often read stories and see images in the news about violent events in the Middle East, but we very rarely get to hear the perspective of an individual who lived through them. Inspired by loved ones who grew up during the Lebanese Civil War, it is my hope that Bombs of Beirut provides a sonic picture of what day-to-day life is like in a turbulent Middle East—not filtered through the news and media, but through the real words of real people.
The audio playback includes recorded interviews with family and friends who shared their various experiences living in a time of war; it also presents sound documentation of bombings and attacks on civilians, tape-recorded on an apartment balcony between 1976–1978. Bombs of Beirut is dedicated to my family."
If you’d like more insight into this project, good news! Kouyoumdjian will be a guest for my upcoming third season to Sound Off launching this spring! Make sure you’re subscribed wherever you listen to podcasts so you don’t miss my conversation with her and so many others that I can’t wait to tell you about.