Truth be told, my discovery of Armenia and Komitas was by accident. That being said, in my world, accidents are by design by a power higher than mine.

I was in Queens NY, a little over 5 years ago at an Armenian, Russian and Greek dinner party where I played my signature Jazzical music, weaving between classical and jazz in a seamless fashion for a small group of people. One woman, Emma Arakelyan, came up to me and said to me, “You play this Jazzical music so well, you should apply it to Komitas.” I did not know what Komitas was, so I asked her politely that very question wherein she said, “Komitas is not a what; Komitas is a he!”

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She proceeded to give me a brief history of Komitas of Armenia and encouraged me to explore the music. It was a very interesting
story of an Armenian monk who would, in many ways, save a very large portion of Armenian
music from extinction when the Armenian Genocide took place. He would later become one of the first internationally known ethnomusicologists, inventing a new music notational system to archive this music.
 

I left the party later and went back to my normal life of playing, recording, and producing (I was on deadline for a big music project), but Emma’s conversation stayed with me. About 6 months later, I had a day where I had no work to do and decided to look up this Komitas guy and listen to Armenian music online. I thought it would be 10-15 minutes, and then I would move on to something else. But when I sat down and listened on YouTube, something clicked inside of me. I was compelled to listen to more music. A few hours passed, and I called my family into Jazzical Lab, my studio, and said, “YO!! You have to listen to this….” I have been hooked ever since.

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It has become my life's mission to bring the music of Komitas and Armenia to the world in a new way for the 21st century. And I will do just that!