Lucine Musaelian, Fred Thomas and Oliver Dover are exploring the vast reservoir of sacred and secular Armenian music. Having met in 2023 in London, their trio unifies Lucine’s Armenian heritage and experience in Early Music, Fred’s grasp of improvisation and Medieval repertoire, and Oliver’s deep experience with the wind instruments of Eastern Europe and beyond. Theirs is an open-minded practice which combines writing original compositions, improvisation, and a deep dive into the incredible musical repository of Armenia.
According to Lucine, “Grigor Naregatsi’s texts have been recited, read, chanted, and sung for centuries, and the Armenian folk melodies have been passed down for generations, telling the emotional story of faith, the Armenian people and their land. This music inspires deep expression that has come through in our collaboration. Our three backgrounds have combined to bring a new perspective to this repertoire – one that we feel will resonate with many people.” Fred says that “a very personal creative essence can be extracted from combining poetic fantasy with historical enquiry, using imagination to supplement the kind of knowledge – always fragmentary, often hidden – that an excavation of the past digs up.” By pairing their own co-written works with inventive interpretations of rare chants and folk dances, a surprising yet coherent body of work emerges.
All three multi-instrumentalist composers, Lucine, Fred and Oliver have a rich palette of colours to explore freely: dramatic vocal monodies are enveloped by the nebulous drones summoned by a viola da gamba or a purring clarinet; whilst a prepared piano intones ritualistic bell-like patterns against abstract microtonal atmospheres, a haunting kaval ghosts improvised countermelodies behind the voice. Via this striking blend of sonorities, this trio is assembling its own book of devotional music, blurring the lines between old and new, and softening the edges between past and present.
Their EP ‘Havoon’ is out now
“A pious homage to Armenian vocal traditions, accurately intoned in the original language by Lucine Musaelian voice and (viola da gamba), with the support of the inventive multi-instrumentalist with Anglo-Argentine ancestry Fred Thomas and the British clarinetist Oliver Dover, the latter’s moving modal improvisations denoting aesthetics of Djivan Gasparyan, the master of the traditional Armenian instrument duduk.” România Literară
