Djivan Gasparyan

Djivan Gasparyan plays the duduk, an oboe-like instrument carved from the apricot tree. And he plays it beautifully, like he’s blowing a hole through my heart. For my wife G’s birthday a few years ago, I bought tickets to an unusual concert at the Hollywood Bowl, picked up a couple of picnic boxes, and set out for a rare cultural night out. We had a box to ourselves in the middle of the amphitheater, and happily munched on our sandwiches and sipped wine in the setting sun. The first group to perform was an Armenian choir – turns out LA is home to the largest Armenian population outside of Armenia. Next up was Djivan Gasparyan, who came out and played a series of transcendently beautiful dudek pieces while being accompanied by some kind of unwavering drone. The sun had just set and the stars (that is, the three that are visible from Hollywood) had started peering out. The whole audience fell into a deep and respectful silence, and I almost wept with the beauty of it all. Or perhaps I was almost weeping because I had a severe case of laryngitis and each tentative sip of wine was like swallowing sandpaper. The concert finished up with the LA Philharmonic playing the glorious (and, at the time, very trendy) Symphony #3 (Symphony of Sorrowful Songs) by Henrik Gorecki. By the time it was over, it was freezing cold and my throat felt like it was bleeding so it was all we could do to ride out the last few chords and then run to the car. But the middle of that program, leaning back and closing my eyes and listening to the holy tones of the world’s foremost dudek player drift out into the endless night, is one of my most cherished memories of being in LA.

There are plenty of Djivan Gasparyan recordings out there, and, from what I’ve heard, they all have plenty to recommend them, although they do tend to sound a bit the same after a while. For some reason, this piece stands out among the others for me. I couldn’t tell you why, perhaps because it was the first piece of his that I ever heard – on a tape of the same name borrowed from a pleasant but not too bright assistant editor I worked with once for a week. I never did buy that original album, but I found a copy of this track on the third disc of the well-regarded Trance Planet series of world music, compiled by former KCRW musical director (and irritating radio “personality”) Tom Schnabel. Fortunately, buyers of the Trance Planet discs don’t have to actually hear Schnabel talk, and the set does collect some incredibly obscure pieces that you would go mad or broke trying to track down on your own, so, by all means, if soothing sounds from the four corners of the planet are what you’re looking for, pick it up.