By Vicky Nvard Melkonyan

Out of oblivion, a single string stretches to eternity. Its lonely sound swells as the soul travels beyond name, nation, and country. Tigrane Kazazian’s music is his heritage and gift to the world. 

Tigrane Kazazian grew up with music in his veins and it was music that brought him and his father closer together. Tigrane is a French-Armenian composer, vocalist, and multi-instrumentalist born in Egypt who is perhaps best known for his oud pieces. His father, Georges Kazazian, is a renowned oudist and composer. 

Tigrane is an extraordinary artist who, having learned to play in his 20’s, has created multiple solo compositions, pieces for documentary films and cinema, released a full-length album, formed different bands collaborating with exceeding artists in the scene, and played in over a dozen concerts around the world. 

Glancing back at his teenage and young adult years, Tigrane remembers fondly how tennis (and not music) occupied all his thoughts. He started playing tennis at the age of five, became a top player in Egypt, and even gave private lessons in subsequent years. Back then, his father’s music and work as a composer were always in the forefront, but even so, Tigrane never saw his future in music. His true calling was hiding further in the years, across continents.

After studying at the American University in Cairo, Tigrane continued his studies in Political Science at Concordia University (Montreal, Canada). It was a seemingly insignificant event that fueled Tigrane’s interest in playing music. Hoping to mend a strained relationship with his father, he asked Georges Kazazian for an instrument to borrow. Playing the oud, however, proved to be quite a daunting task for which Tigrane was completely unprepared. 

His determination was not to be swayed, however, and Tigrane took up the guitar and fell completely in love with the sound of it. Without a tutor’s help, or anyone’s for that matter, he began playing the strings, one at a time, discovering the scales by listening to the sound. Thus, his music-learning process always had a compositional flair and it soon poured into a melody and then another and then another. 

Tigrane’s journey to music gave life to numerous beautiful pieces including “Moving Sands”, recorded at Pyramids Studio in 2018. An exceptional piece laced with intricate melodies and beautiful percussion immediately takes the listener out of their routine and away to the colorful world of emotions. Like the wanderings of a lonely caravan, it transmits sadness, gloom, and grief in such an earnest way that transcends any genre. The three-and-a-half-minute composition sounds like a conversation with a long-lost friend who has seen, felt, and experienced much in life and shares it through the elegant simplicity of notes.

Tigrane’s other instruments include the guitar and the piano. “Nour”, which is a piano solo, resembles a tête-à-tête with the self; it is both profound and minimalistic. The beautiful sounds of the piano are guaranteed to stir up some buried emotions in one’s soul. This fascinating composition does justice to the instrument’s amazing sound and stands as a deep reflection, a brutal look into one’s own past where we can be honest with ourselves. Tigrane’s music sounds somewhat like Ludovico Einaudi, a renowned Italian pianist and composer whose art is characterized by nostalgic and graceful melodies. In a way that is very much his own, Tigrane’s music transmits feelings of melancholy, at times sadness, at times worry, as he allows us the space to just be. 

“I think in our universal human experience we should be able to create the intention within ourselves to face sadness. It’s important to just feel those uncomfortable emotions and to confront the person inside,” Tigrane said. Only then, in the artist’s opinion, will we be able to fully tap into our own genius.

Music consumed Tigrane completely as he played for days on end. Soon, he was able to tackle the oud and one step at a time, it became his main and most treasured instrument. It served as a link that bonded him with Georges Kazazian, an extraordinary oud virtuoso, and composer. How fortunate, then, that his father never impose his will on Tigrane’s musical education. Having discovered music and composition on his own, Tigrane learned much about his father.

“I was born with it [Georges Kazazian’s music] but when I listened again as a musician, my father’s music sounded different. It was as if he was speaking to me about life and teaching me important things about life through music, and it all made sense.”

The oud opened a whole new world. Tigrane learned from Georges’ career, getting first-hand information that unveiled the mysterious aura of a musician to some extent. In 2012 Tigrane decided to leave Canada and move to Armenia where he joined the oud classes at the Yerevan State Conservatory. Since then, the artist has worked tirelessly on his music, performing at events, and networking with fellow musicians of Armenia. 

Among his achievements are a series of concerts with Georges Kazazian in Armenia and Egypt as well as the Kazazian Trio with renowned percussionist Eduard Harytyunyan and duduk player Arsen Petrosyan who has been nominated for Songlines Music Awards 2022. Together with these talented artists, Tigrane shares his unique meditative soundscapes along with deeply rooted emotions that relate to every human being. He signed with Green United Music to record an album called Cairo Nights and is going to perform in several concerts in Yerevan, Gyumri, and Goris in April 2022, during the Francophonie days. 

Composing comes naturally to Tigrane. “I play every day and try to sense if the fingers are doing something different,” he said. The greatest joy and the highest aim for him is to prove his love for the instrument, be it the piano, the oud, or the guitar, and to highlight through music the “raw power each and every one has inside”.

Perhaps the most iconic representation of the father-son relationship is “The Dance of Fire”, a longer piece with two ouds playing side by side. True to its title, “The Dance of Fire” can evoke visions of flames dancing above ground, some quick and elusive, others thick and full. The two instruments speak to each other as if reciting a poem with careful deliberation. Occasionally, among the nostalgic meticulousness and solemn melodies, serenity finds expression. There is energy and motion in this metaphorical dance as father and son weave a multitude of emotions into their music. 

The single string stretches perpetually, from father to son. The music, transcending all we know, takes the listener on an emotional journey not to be missed.

Top photo: Tigrane and George Kazazian

(Vicky Nvard Melkonyan is an independent writer and editor who has been published in INKspire, Hetq, and other digital magazines. Vicky graduated from the American University in Armenia in 2020 with a bachelor's degree in Communication and has now partnered with a serialized storytelling platform Mythrill to publish her very first fantasy novel.)