Kevork Mourad a Syrian artist
Handel’s Israel In Egypt is a well-known piece in the classical canon. This commission was given to me by the Los Angeles Master Chorale to interpret from my perspective as a Syrian and the descendant of Armenian genocide survivors. It is a very large-scale piece, for full orchestra and chorus, about 80 minutes long.
This is a visual and musical piece that aims to re-create a world that no longer exists. Using images of artifacts, the piece recreates—through music and through live and animated visuals—worlds that we only know now from the fragments that time has allowed to survive. Composer Vache Sharafyan composed the music based on visuals by Kevork Mourad.
Performed by Zulal Armenian A Cappella Trio, Gevorg Dabaghyan, duduk, Shane Shanahan, percussion.
This piece was commissioned by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and premiered at the museum on November 2, 2018.
Lost Spring was performed at the MuCEM in Marseille, the Morgenland Festival, and National Sawdust in New York.
Lost Spring is a multi-media play, co-created by artist Kevork Mourad and singer/writer Anaïs Tekerian, with music by Anna Garano and featuring a dancer and a young actress.
How do you explain inhuman cruelty to innocence itself? How do you pass on a history like the Armenian Genocide to a bright-eyed child? What are your rights and duties in doing so?
Lost Spring asks these questions, through the incredible but true story of Mourad’s great-grandmother, who survived the Armenian genocide one hundred years ago.
Lost Spring is a moving, thought-provoking piece that delves into the ideas about the transmission of history, the duties of the parent and of the artist, the pain and the privilege of historical inheritance, and the poetic links between the image and the word, between movement and song…