It is already 50 years that saxophonist and bandmaster Georgi Garanyan is playing jazz, recording music and managing jazz bands.
In the Soviet union almost everybody knew Georgi Garanyan because he managed Melodia band, which used to play with almost all jazz players and singers of the Soviet times. One could see his name in film castings too because he used to head the symphonic orchestra of the filmmakers’ union and wrote music for films. Now he says that he does not have time to work on films and he prefers more “live” work. Now he heads two groups: a jazz band named after Oleg Lundstrem, and the jazz orchestra of Krasnodar city of Russia. G. Garanyan proudly says that his bands mostly consist of young people. “We have two old men only,” he said. Famous Armenian jazz player Levon Malkhasyan says that he is happy to see that young people are going to different clubs to listen to jazz. He says that he is happy to see that people’s interest to jazz is growing: “Everyone says that jazz is flourishing in Armenia but I say that it is not flourishing, but it was born in 60s when I started to play jazz here.”
G. Garanyan has been invited by the Armenian Jazz70 artists’ group to visit Armenia. On December 15 he participated in a concert in participation with saxophonist Alexander Zakaryan, Nikoghos Vardanyan and pianist Levon Malkhasyan. Yesterday he said that he had not been able to participate in a rehearsal and said that he had not met any jazzmen who would not understand each other well. “We will understand now too,” he said.
Concerning the national interpretation of jazz music G. Garanyan says: “When a good player is playing you can’t distinguish whether the player is Armenian or no. In the Soviet times the ministry of culture was obligating to make jazz national only. It was not bad because interesting components were being born but time came to prove that national jazz cannot be organic. It’s not about the quality only. There was time when the Polish jazz was a special thing for us but that type of jazz could not resist the change of times and did not survive. Jazz has thousands of directions and you can play whatever you want, but you have to play well. You can use national music elements. When you are listening to good jazz you can never guess the nationality of that music.”
Malkhasyan and Garanyan agreed with the opinion that now there is lack of good jazz vocalists. “There are no jazz singers in Yerevan, neither men nor women. We don’t have a school of jazz vocalists. There have been two good singers, Tatevik Hovhannisyan and Elvina Makaryan, but there has not been school of jazz singers. We should take care and think about jazz vocal because jazz cannot be interpreted in the stiles of Rabis and Sayat Nova,” said Malkhasyan. Garanyan reminded about Irina Otiyeva, who has Armenian origin and is teaching in Moscow. “And the other ones are in the pops style,” he said.
Jazz is a direction, which first of all gives birth to thoughts and mood, this is the nature of jazz. This music mostly depends on the performers and modern interpretation because people are not listening to music only, but to the specific interpretation of separate jazz players as these specific interpretations cannot be repeated by other players. Garanyan says, “Jazz is more modern than any other music because improvisation is born just at the time of playing it and only this day exists for jazz, and the jazz improvises for this day only. There is no jazz of yesterday, of course if it is not recorded. A jazzman can do whatever he wants. He can communicate to the audience all what is born in his head, the most important thing is to do it professionally”.
He praises the work of the organization in charge of celebrating the anniversary of the Armenian jazz, which is organizing concerts during the whole year. He also says that he believes that his Jazz show named Jem-5 on the air of Russian Cultura TV channel will have influence on such events organized in Armenia.