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The Duduk Master: Djivan Gasparian at the Kremlin Palace

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  • The Duduk Master: Djivan Gasparian at the Kremlin Palace

    The Moscow Times, Russia
    Dec 1 2006

    The Duduk Master

    Djivan Gasparian, whose music has been featured on Peter Gabriel
    albums and in Hollywood blockbusters, plays at the Kremlin Palace.

    By Svetlana Graudt
    Published: December 1, 2006

    When I met Djivan Gasparian in his suite at the Peking Hotel in
    central Moscow, the 78-year-old musician was shaving with a cordless
    razor. He told me to call him Uncle Djivan and offered me a seat on
    the sofa. Dressed in a warm sweater and fighting a slight cold, the
    soft-spoken Gasparian was meeting journalists ahead of his concert
    next Monday with the Russian National Orchestra in the Kremlin
    Palace.

    Gasparian is a master of the duduk, an oboe-like instrument that has
    been played in Armenia for at least 1,200 years and has lately
    appeared in a number of Hollywood movie soundtracks.

    Although he has performed snippets of music with some of the world's
    leading orchestras, Monday's concert will be his first full-length
    performance, featuring a variety of duduk compositions. These will
    include excerpts from the soundtracks to "Day Watch," "The Last
    Temptation of Christ" and "Gladiator," as well as reworked Deep
    Purple songs and popular Armenian and Russian melodies.


    "I want to play so everyone will like it," he said. "The duduk sounds
    very beautiful with a symphony orchestra. It is like brother and
    sister with bassoon, oboe, strings. It adds beauty to an orchestra."

    The musician, who was born in a village outside Yerevan, credits his
    father, an illiterate bricklayer, for introducing him to music.

    "My father was a good singer, but he wasn't professional. He sang
    just like a National Opera singer and told stories about love and so
    on. He sang both male and female parts. He had a very beatiful voice
    and he built the most beautiful buildings in Yerevan that are still
    standing."

    When Gasparian was 7 years old, he heard a three-piece band playing
    accompaniment to a silent film. That was how he first heard the
    duduk.

    "As they say, it was love at first sight. It went straight to my
    heart," he recalled.

    Gasparian approached the band's duduk player and asked him for his
    instrument. After some pleading, the man gave it to him, and
    Gasparian spent the next winter learning to play it. The next year,
    Gasparian met the man again and so impressed him with his playing
    that the man gave him another duduk.

    In 1948, Gasparian joined an amateur ensemble that eventually took
    him to a music festival in Moscow. After the final concert, he was
    given a Pobeda wristwatch on behalf of Stalin, who was in the
    audience.

    "I took the watch and all of Armenia knew that Djivan got a watch
    from Stalin. I didn't realize [its importance] -- I was just a
    teenager -- or else I would have kept the watch."

    Later, he joined various professional song and dance emsembles and
    took first prizes in competitions in the Soviet Union and around the
    world.

    Twenty years ago, Gasparian moved to the United States. He is now a
    familiar face in Hollywood, where he records film music and
    collaborates with musicians like Peter Gabriel, Michael Brook, Brian
    Eno, Sting and Queen guitarist Brian May, all of whom he considers
    his friends. Gasparian said he seldom goes back to his native
    Armenia, though he does give the occasional concert there.

    A fully self-taught player, he doesn't practice much before concerts.

    "For my instrument, the first thing you need is soul. I almost don't
    need to practice. I am a good improviser. I quickly pick up any
    traditional music played on national instruments, be they from Japan,
    Italy, Germany."

    The duduk, called the dziranapogh in Armenian, is made from wild
    apricot wood and has nine finger holes, including one for the thumb.
    Its present name has been around since the 1920s and is thought to be
    derived from the Russian dudka, or pipe. It has a range of one
    octave.

    Initially, the duduk was seldom heard outside of Armenian circles.
    Gasparian has taken it almost singlehandedly to stages around the
    world, where he performs with jazz and rock musicians. He has even
    formed a duduk quartet, which includes bass, tenor, soprano and alto
    duduks.

    "I never thought I would become what I am now. It just happened this
    way. I simply play well. Nothing else. I know that when I play,
    people have shivers going down their spine. I get them myself. When I
    do something new and I really like it, I get shivers, too."

    Djivan Gasparian and the Russian National Orchestra play Mon. at 7
    p.m. at the Kremlin Palace. Metro Alexandrovsky Sad. Tel. 928-5232.
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