First time I heard about Tigran Hamasyan was from my mother. She told me story of a boy who had amazed the audience and members of examination board when he was passing his final exam at music school where my mother used to teach solfege. There was some program of classical music that he had to perform but everybody in the room knew about Tigran’s talent and passion of jazz music. After official part was over he was asked to perform few jazz compositions and the public was speechless after his performance. Everybody knew that one day this boy’s name will be heard from the greatest stages of the world, and this is exactly what happened. Quite shortly he performs and wins at many prestigious jazz festivals abroad as well as in Armenia and becomes true revelation for jazz music.

I had few of his earlier records and I was always fond of his music. Recently he released a new album called A Fable. I was pleasantly surprised when I saw this album on a playlist of Air France jet on my way from Paris to San Francisco. But I kept the pleasure of listening to it till Monterey Jazz Festival where he was performing live with his trio. Tigran has this unique sense of performing mixture of Armenian folk notes with contemporary jazz and this all together is twisted with his humming of “fable”s in a microphone.