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The Gurdjieff Folk Instruments Ensemble Levon Eskenian Emmanuel Hovhannisyan: duduk; Avag Margaryan: blul; Armen Ayvazyan: kamancha; Aram Nikoghosyan: oud; Meri Vardanyan: kanon; Vladimir Papikyan: santur; Davit Avagyan: tar, saz; Mesrop Khalatyan: dap; Norayr Gapoyan: duduk Eduard Harutyunyan: percussion Artistic Director: Levon Eskenian The Armenian Gurdjieff Folk Instruments Ensemble was founded by Levon Eskenian to play ethnographically authentic arrangements of the G.I. Gurdjieff/Thomas de Hartmann piano music. Their debut album on ECM, Music of G.I. Gurdjieff, was widely acclaimed, and won an Edison Award as Album of the Year in 2012. Now Eskenian and his musicians turn their attention to the music of Komitas Vardapet (1869-1935). Composer, ethnomusicologist, arranger, singer and priest, Komitas is popularly held to be the founder of contemporary music in Armenia, and in his work as a collector he explored the connections that uniquely bind together Armenian sacred and secular music. With their special focus on folk instrumentation and inspired arrangements the Ensemble illuminates the deep roots of Komitass compositions in this program recorded in Lugano in February 2015.