For Gyumri is Armenian pianist and composer
Tigran Hamasyan's third release for Nonesuch. That said, it is also a five-track extension of 2017's excellent
An Ancient Observer. Clocking in at just under half-an-hour, it is, depending on your point of view, either a long EP or a short album. Like its predecessor,
Hamasyan utilizes the solo piano approach, but augments it in places by wordless falsetto singing, whistling, and minimal electronics. These additions are not distractions, but integral to the works they appear in. One example is on the all-too-brief video single "Rays of Light." Under four minutes long, the minimal, hypnotic chord progression is adorned by the elongated sounds of the instrument's pedals, and reverb in the middle and high registers with just a hint of backmasking. Recalling a slightly more ornate version of
Harold Budd's earliest work, it is both tender and bittersweet. "The American" commences as a lithe jazz number, but mutates via a series of drama-building crescendos, layered vocals, and whistling, into something other. The chord progression remains, but
Hamasyan's soloing becomes fleet, knotty, and compelling with a sharp blues turn in its final section before bringing back the original melody, which minimally quotes
the Beatles' "Eleanor Rigby." The set-closer "Revolving Prayer" is also its longest track, almost comprising a suite at over 12 minutes. Its introduction is kissed by the impressionistic ghost traces of
Errol Garner,
Claude Debussy, and Armenian folk music. Its progressions alternate through traditions both ancient and modern in each pass, until modern creative jazz claims the center with a canny series of arpeggios and motivic shifts, with
Hamasyan occupying solo space on both ends of the keyboard. It might as well have been titled "Evolving Prayer," as new movements are woven into the fabric of the original thematic statement. A close mike allows for the sound of his fingers touching the keys, the pedals, and his voice guiding the fleet, breath-taking improvisation that unfolds into sharp classical lines and striated harmonic statements shapeshifting until its conclusion, when its original theme returns, whispering to a close with his twinned vocals adding a wordless chant to embrace and welcome the sacred -- think Komitas. Because of its deliberate similarity to
An Ancient Observer,
For Gyumri may not be a major work on its own. That said, when considered as an extension of its predecessor, it serves to make an already remarkable statement profound. ~ Thom Jurek