March 2011 American Public Media
to air pianist's Hovhaness series

Sahan Arzruni's Hovhaness centennial concert series
will be broadcast nationwide, beginning March 28

Internationally renowned pianist Sahan Arzruni has launched a series of concerts to mark the centenary year of Alan Hovhaness. The concerts will be broadcast over some 300 radio stations across America throughout 2011, with the first one airing on Monday, March 28. The concerts are part of the prestigious "Performance Today" program produced by American Public Media and can also be heard online at Performance Today's website.

Arzruni says of Hovhaness: "[he] became one of the iconic musicians of the 20th century, noted for his mystical strain and his creative use of classical Armenian musical elements. His ability to fuse Eastern musical aesthetics with Western compositional technique made him one of the fathers of the genre known as "World Music." Hovhaness was also one of the first musicians to experiment with Minimalism in Western music. In many of his compositions, the music is stripped to its most fundamental elements, for the purpose of achieving — through repetition and iteration — what Hovhaness termed a direct, subjective communion with ultimate reality."

As a tribute to the 100th anniversary of the composer's birth, Arzruni began the current concert series with a Berkeley, California concert-lecture which was recorded by American Public Media. This first event was sponsored by Other Minds, an organization devoted to presenting contemporary music. Other Minds has made this event available to all, as both an audio download and (first half of the performance only) video download, through its online archive.

As an authority on Hovhaness and his music, Mr. Arzruni has also been interviewed by Fred Child, the host of TV's Live from Lincoln Center. His comments and observations from that interview will be interspersed between the musical selections during the "Performance Today" broadcasts.

Upcoming and recent broadcasts are listed below with links to the broadcasts available on the site's online archive.

American Public Media's Performance Today is broadcast on 260 public radio stations across America and is heard by about 1.3 million people each week. Each station individually decides what time to air the program. To find out where and when Performance Today is broadcast in your area (if you are in America) visit the Performance Today website.