Bay Area-based Armenian vocalist and musician, Khatchadour Khatchadourian, shares an intimate solo concert exploring sacred music of Armenia. Khatchadour will guide us through a musical journey reflecting upon both church and sacred hymns of Armenia, along with love songs, nature-infused and folk music-centered melodies. The concert explores the sacred, as found in formal worship, in nature, and in love.
Bio:
Khatchadour is a Lebanese-Armenian vocalist and duduk wooodwind player based out of San Francisco Bay Area. His vocal repertoire is grounded in both the Armenian and Arab vocal traditions. Growing up within the Armenian diaspora on the Lebanese coast, and later having spent many years in Aleppo, Syria, Khatchadour’s voice pays homage to these landscapes along with that of the South Caucasus, and Anatolia, where he traces his family ancestry.
Khatchadour’s passion for the duduk, an Armenian double reed woodwind, began in 2007, and has since, taken him on musical journeys across Armenia and Southern France. He studies under master duduk player, Levon Minassian. Additionally, for the past few years, Khatchadour has been immersed in the study of Persian vocal Radif, and sings in Farsi, under the instruction of master vocalist, Mahsa Vahdat.
Khatchadour’s musical journey was recently featured across KQED’s The California Report Magazine, under the title of “Meet The Duduk Whisperer: A Bay Area Armenian Folk Musician Revives Centuries of Soul” by journalist Elize Manoukian. Khatchadour is currently completing his 6th album, Shounch: Breath, which is partially funded and made possible through the Musical Grant Program, administered by InterMusic SF, and supported by the Clarence E. Heller Charitable Foundation and the Hewlett Foundation. www.intermusicsf.org