Jazz Articles about Areni Agbabian

About Areni Agbabian

Album Review

Tigran Hamasyan: The Call Within

Read "The Call Within" reviewed by Chris M. Slawecki

by Chris M. Slawecki
October 28, 2020

Tigran Hamasyan had already demonstrated that he's an excellent pianist: He won the Montreux Jazz Festival's piano competition in 2003. He was only seventeen when he released his first recording (World Passion, Nocturn) in 2005 and then he claimed top prize the Thelonious Monk International Jazz Piano Competition the year after that. Hamasyan's Nonesuch Records debut Mockroot (2015), won the Echo Jazz Award for International Piano Instrumentalist of the Year. But The Call Within also illustrates Hamasyan's remarkable ...

Album Review

Areni Agbabian: Bloom

Read "Bloom" reviewed by Michael McKinney

by Michael McKinney
December 30, 2019

Singer and pianist Areni Agbabian is probably best known for her work with Armenian-American pianist-wunderkind Tigran Hamasyan, in which the two musicians draw from their shared Armenian heritage. Both are also adept at creating moments of hazy and ethereal beauty. Bloom, Agbabian's ECM debut, made without Hamasyan, focuses on such moments. The album is defined by Agbabian's voice, a haunting alto with a ghostly sheen. She rarely aims for flashy or obviously technical vocal turns; instead, her ...