AMG/Créa Son
Nara Noïan : Cristal (B/ARM,2008)***'
With a musical (piano) & dramatic art education in Armenia she performed in both disciplines of her studies. Some of the commissions were a part in two (French-) Armenian movies); she became a music teacher in France and more recently in Brussels, Belgium, where she now resides already for some years. Here she also had a few music projects like the group Bradyaga (or ‘Nomad’) besides some other musical collaborations. This is her first release focused as a solo work. It has songs in Armenian, a bit like Armenian folk songs inspirations and instrumentals. They’re sung from the comfort position of a woman where it is too easy to stay within her own dignity, but then, with the advantages she also misses the direct connections with her roots and forefathers. In that way the Armenian flutes call to an even further distance, while recalling as they always do, in its sounds, so clearly the wide spreading spaces of deserted old mountain fields, an endless sadness which often also associates with it all that continued to happen during history in this area. She plays a melodic dance on crystal clear piano, a simple but romantic adventure of a free fantasy, carrying a playful range of associations, where she travels her journey in her mind and experiences towards these roots while meeting a whole range of other influences over the areas, from Greece (a touch in the acoustic guitar) over Turkish over Uzbekistan and perhaps even towards Persia, while she remains the woman in her own position. Especially the main instrumental piece on piano crossed the bridge very well.
