Tjeknavorian and Mehrtash

My interview with Maestro Loris Tjeknavorian was published in Persian Cultural Center of San Diego's Peyk this week. Here are images of the two-page feature. Click on the image to read it. If this is a problem, let me know and I'll post the text.

My friend, Mersedeh, who is a writer and the Editor of Peyk's English section, has been a very good friend to me over the past year. She is a special young woman, worldly, educated, talented, multi-lingual, artistic, and refined. Though she appears serious and intense most of the time, she is actually a very funny girl, full of subtle and intelligent humor and thought. Mersedeh celebrates a birthday tomorrow. I'd like to wish her a year full of pleasant surprises and achievements. In her new year of life, I hope she laughs more, dances more, shops more (if such a thing is even possible!), learns more, and reaches higher. She can do anything she wants, as far as I'm concerned, including but not limited to, walking on water! I also hope she worries less and sleeps more. These are my wishes for a dear friend on the eve of her birthday. Happy Birthday Mersedeh Jan.

Hard Tuesday

Loris Tjeknavorian conducts The Armenian Philharmonic Orchestra and Shahram Nazeri, performing a Kurdish song in Tehran in 2006. Simply lovely!

Farshad says it's raining in Tehran. I remember the soft spring rains of Tehran so well. The rain that spreads the sweet smell of wet dirt in the air and washes the pollution, delivering a spotless, shiny city back to all those who keep forgetting what a breathtakingly beautiful city Tehran is, surrounded by all those gorgeous mountains to the north, the south, the east, and west. I miss Tehran so much today. Our weather was sunny today, but I'm so cold all the time these days. I swear if I could, I would take my blue blanket to work and wrap it around me and sit behind my desk, just as I'm doing all around the house these days!

Someone around me is suffering from a breakup. It's so hard to watch him suffer, unable to do much to help. 'Happened difficulties' are the order of the day! And it's painful even to watch the thin face, the pained eyes, and the requisite sad and quiet solitude of an ended relationship in which a person must wallow and think and heal and eventually recover. I have been there and I know better than to try. True, you can take the person out to dinner or a movie for a few hours or try and engage him in a discussion about politics or arts, but soon he will have to go back to the cocoon of sadness which is built almost overnight around a broken heart. Delam misoozeh barash. I'm useless, though.

And as though I don't have enough challenges facing my present these day, I have been visited by my past again this week. It's been an unwelcome surprise. Yes, I know what to do and what to say, but it's hard just the same. I wished the past would stay exactly where it belongs, in the past. If you are having a good week, please tell me about it. My kids are telling me good stories about their work and school, too, which is really a blessing. I think some days everyone can stand to be infused with the hope that only others can give.

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.”....

An Eventful Sunday

Dinner and interview with Maestro Loris Tjeknavorian, Berkeley, Sunday, March 9, 2008.

I can't believe how late I got home tonight. I went to traffic school all day, and ended up going to see Darvag group's excellent new play, In Memory of Kazem Ashtari, in Berkeley. I was delighted to meet Maestro Loris Tjeknavorian at the play. He graciously agreed to be interviewed for a piece I will be writing soon. In search of a good time where his busy schedule would allow the meeting, we ended up agreeing to do the interview after the play. So he and I and a group of good friends went to my favorite restaurant in Berkeley and got it done. He is such a charming man, a true Iranian, and is full of life and kindness and love and humor. The man is really really funny, I'm not kidding you! I will start working on my story tomorrow and will let you see it as soon as it's ready.

So, it was a really long, exhausting, and exciting day. This will have to do for now. I didn't manage to reply to my emails or to your kind comments this weekend. There simply aren't enough hours in a day, it seems. I'll have to work on my time management this week. Have a good Monday y'all.