Slow Sunday

Interviewing Loris Tjeknavorian in Berkeley, March 9, 2008. Photo by Jahanshah Javid.

I spent a quiet day, working (very slowly) on the "organization" project I had promised myself for the weekend. It was a relatively productive day. The boys and their friend, Paul, stayed home for a dinner I had managed to prepare for them. I went to look in on them as they were eating and Paul thanked me and told me that he hadn't had a home-made dinner in a while. That was so sweet. Such is life in a college town.

For those of you who had asked to see it, here's an excerpt from the interview I did with Maestro Loris Tjeknavorian in March. I have my first draft and will be working to finish it for publication tomorrow night. Be good you all and have a wonderful week ahead.

....The dapper and handsome Loris Tjeknavorian is a world-class conductor and composer, born and raised in an Armenian family in Iran. He has conducted many of the most renowned international symphony and philharmonic orchestras to adoring audiences. Yet, after living in Armenia for many years after the Revolution, he keeps going back to Iran, where he says he feels a primitive love for the place, so similar to the love one would feel for his parents. I have had the good fortune of watching him onstage in Tehran, where the love affair between him and his Iranian audience is so palpable. He is so reachable and so unpretentious on stage, his interactions with his orchestra members and audience create electric magic. In the performance I attended in Tehran, he and one of the players acted out a joke on stage which had the audience in stitches!

I asked him if it wasn’t difficult for him to work in Iran. He said “There are hardships everywhere, and you have to make do with what you have. The Iranian government for the most part leaves me alone, never interfering with my art. I can do as I wish. They have never stopped me from saying my mind, and have never taken issue with my female soloists and my bow and tie. Iranian audiences are so warm. In my concerts I receive love and return love without inhibition. When I come on stage, they adore me and I adore them.”

He says: “From my youth to my old age, I have always been in love. The day I am not in love, I want to die. Love keeps us alive, and able to do things. I think it’s better to die for love than to live without love. I wrote a song about that. Though love for a woman is the best kind of love, it doesn’t have to be all that love is about. I love God. I have a love relationship with God. This love doesn’t show up in religious books, it is of a very personal nature. Love connects all people and all humanity. I don’t follow any religious doctrine for this love. It is just a love to God, a relationship I have with him.”....